24 



ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE aist ANNUAL 

 MEETING OF THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB, 

 MARCH 30th, 1901. 



By DAVID HOWARD, J. P., F.C S., President. 



In completing my term of office as President I must yet 

 again congratulate the Club on the achievement of the long 

 delayed purpose of establishing a Museum, alike to render 

 permanent, and to spread more widely, the work of the Society. 

 I need not go again over the history of that arduous, and at 

 times seemingly hopeless, task, but would venture to remind our 

 members that the real work is but begun ; in museums, as in 

 everything else, growth is the text of life, and without living 

 progress, a Museum sinks into the fossil stage of existence 

 and is best buried out of sight along with other fossils. Unfortu- 

 nately we already find that we need more money to develop the 

 work, and any who are .ivilling to assist, may rest well assured 

 that their money will be fruitfully expended under the care of 

 our indefatigable Curator. We are already beginning to feel 

 that space, and not the wherewithal to fill it, will be our difficulty, 

 and that even the noble generosity of Mr. Passmore Edwards so 

 freely supplemented by that of the Technical Education Com- 

 mittee of the Borough of West Ham. has given us none too much 

 room for our museum work. Perhaps some will say, "there is 

 no satisfying such people." It is quite true, and it is better so; 

 in scientific as in some more important matters, the sense of ful- 

 filment and satisfaction is a very dangerous one. I do not know 

 that there is great need that I should impress this on most of 

 those here ; for which of us, even in those matters in which we 

 have done most, and learned most, is under any delusion that he 

 has exhausted the possihilitie,. But I would urge all to keep 

 this truth in mind, and not to fail to impress it on those especially 

 who having made less progress are less conscious how little 

 progress they have made. And there is special danger in a too 

 keen satisfaction in the work of greater minds who have pre- 

 ceeded us. A great teacher may even dwarf the minds of his 

 pupils, by giving them an unconscious despair of progress, by the 

 admiration they rightly feel for his work. It was not the pro- 

 foundly scientific, if imperfect, teaching of Aristotle, but the fatal 

 " ipse magister dixit " of the schoolmen, that dwarfed scientific 



