14 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



It is to be feared that notwithstanding what science has done 

 in the way of promoting the comfort of mankind, of relieving human 

 suffering, and of adding to the material welfare of the community, 

 it does not hold the high place in the estimation of the general public 

 throughout our Empire which is assigned to it elsewhere. This is 

 strikingly exemplified by a plebiscite taken recently by a Paris news- 

 paper, which invited its readers to reply to the question as to who, 

 in their opinion, were the ten greatest Frenchmen of the nineteenth 

 century ; with the result that, out of a total return of fifteen million 

 votes, Pasteur was afforded first place, with 1,300,000, his majority 

 over Victor Hugo, who was placed second, being no less than 

 100,000. Included in the list also were the late Dr. Curie and Dr. 

 Roux, of the Pasteur Institute. The British Medical Journal, from 

 which these figures are taken, points out how different would 

 have been the result of such an appeal to the people of Great Britain ; 

 and in support of its assertion mentioned the fact that when the 

 Order of Merit was instituted, although there was naturally a good 

 deal of difference of opinion as to the names proposed, there was 

 one name as to which disagreement could scarcely have been expected ; 

 yet in more than one of the alternative lists suggested, the name of 

 Lister was conspicuous by its absence. 



Fortunately, however, men of science are not as a rule influenced, 

 at least, in so far as the prosecution of their investigations is con- 

 cerned, by material considerations, or the position assigned to them 

 by the public ; but are content to search after truth for its own sake, 

 realising that what has been done is infinitesimal compared with what 

 yet remains to be accomplished, and that, in the words of Principal 

 John Caird : " The history of human knowledge is a history on the 

 whole of a continuous and ever accelerating progress. In some of its 

 departments this characteristic may be more marked and capable of 

 easier illustration than in others. External accidents, affecting the 

 history of nations, may often have disturbed or arrested the onward 

 movement, or even for a time seem to have altogether obliterated the 

 accumulated results of the thought of the past. But on the whole 

 the law is a constant one which constitutes each succeeding age the 

 inheritor of the intellectual wealth of all preceding ages, and makes 

 it its high vocation to hand on the heritage it has received — enriched 

 by its own contributions — to that which comes after. In almost 

 every department of knowledge, the modern student begins where 

 innumerable minds have been long at work, and with the results of 

 the observations, the experience, the thought and speculation of the 

 past to help him. If the field of knowledge were limited, this 

 indeed, from one point of view, would be a discouraging thought ; 

 for we should in that case be only as gleaners coming in at the close 

 of the day to gather up the few scanty ears that had been left, where 

 other labourers had reaped the substantial fruits of the soil. But, 

 so far from that, vast and varied as that body of knowledge, which 

 is the result of past research, may seem to be, the human race may, 

 without exaggeration, be said to have only entered on its labours. 



