106 Mr Whewell's Address to the British Association 



islands of the ocean, who by means of a piece of board glides 

 through the furious and apparently deadly line of breakers, to 

 the traveller who starts along a rail-road with a rapidity that 

 dazzles the eye; this triumphant joy in successful art is univer- 

 sally felt. But we shall have no difficulty in distinguishing this 

 feeling, from the calm pleasure which we receive from the con- 

 templation of truth. And when we consider how small an ad- 

 vance of speculative science is implied in each successful step of 

 art, we shall be in no danger of imbibing, from the mere high 

 spirits produced by difficulty overcome, any extravagant esti- 

 mate of what man has done or can do, any perverse conception 

 of the true scale of his aims and hopes. 



Still, it would little become us here to be unjust to practical 

 science. Practice has always been the origin and stimulus of 

 theory : Art has ever been the mother of Science — the comely 

 and busy mother of a daughter of a far loftier and serener beau- 

 ty. And so it is likely still to be: there are no subjects in 

 which we may look more hopefully to an advance in sound theo- 

 retical views, than those in which the demands of practice make 

 men willing to experiment on an expensive scale^ with keenness 

 and perseverance ; and reward every addition of our knowledge 

 with an addition to our power. And even they — ^for undoubt- 

 edly there are many such — who require no such bribe as an in- 

 ducement to their own exertions, may still be glad that such a 

 fund should exist, as a means of engaging and recompensing 

 subordinate labourers. 



I will not detain you longer by endeavouring to follow more 

 into detail the application of these observations to the proceed- 

 ings of the General and Sectional Meetings during the present 

 week. But I may remark that some subjects, circumstanced 

 exactly as I have described, will be brought under your notice 

 by the reports which we have reason to hope for on the present 

 occasion. Thus, the state of our knowledge of the laws of the 

 motion of fluids is universally important, since the motion of 

 boats of all kinds, hydraulic machinery, the tides, the flowing 

 of rivers, all depend upon it. Mr Stevenson and Mr Rennie 

 have undertaken to give us an account of different branches of 

 this subject as connected with practice ; and Mr Challis will re- 

 port to us on the present state of the analytical theory. In like 



