140 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



unfolds to our wondering eyes the marvellous life history of the 

 planet. These two sciences alone, through the immensity of the 

 conceptions they involve, 



" Have power to make the noisy years seem moments in 

 the being of the eternal slence." 



The next natural group of sciences will naturally deal with the 

 nature and composition of the Earth's matter, and the means of 

 exploiting it for human benefit, and its artificial reconstructions, 

 whether for utility, as in engineering, or for utility and beauty in 

 combination, as in architecture. The next group will deal with the 

 I?Avs of plant and animal life as we now find them on the planet, 

 whether purely natural, or as artificially modified by human ingenuity 

 and enterprise, and last comes the group that deals with what w-e 

 modestly call Nature's crowning achievement — Man himself, his 

 powers of speech and thought, and their cultivation, his past achieve- 

 ments in Arts and Arms and Policy, his present economic political 

 and social relations, and his individual and racial evolution, as 

 treated in anthropology and ethnology. The field is vast and the 

 labourers are few, but the division of labour, and the loyal and 

 earnest co-operation among the faithful few have already accom- 

 plished much, and is every day by leaps and bounds accomplishing 

 more. It will take a long time before the majority of the dwellers 

 in South Africa can approach with the requisite scientific and literary 

 equipment, say, Tennyson's " In Memoriam," or his Centenary 

 poem, on Virgil (which may be taken as the high-water mark of 

 human utterances in these latter days), but it is an ideal towards 

 which, collectively and individually, we must work, and this South 

 African Association, still in its infancy, but stimulated by recent 

 contact with its great British model, has a noble task in front of it. 

 As to what extent it is either our duty or our interest to allow 

 or encourage our coloured fellow subjects to share in the priceless 

 boon of knowledge, whether technical or general, it is not for me 

 to discuss here. Let us strive with all our might, whether through 

 the agency of school or college, of missions or of associations such 

 as this, for the realisation of a Golden Age which is not vet, when, 

 as the waters cover the sea, knowledge shall cover the fair expanse 

 of a united and prosperous South Africa. 



