PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SECTION A. 45 



work seriously and some may become the donors of the telescopes 

 of the future. 



Newcomb has said that "it is only when men are relieved from 

 the necessity of devoting all their energies to the immediate wants 

 of life that they can lead intellectual lives." 



We have heard a great deal recently about the status of 

 South Africa. The status of South Africa cannot be measured 

 by its material wealth and prosperity, but we may measure it 

 rather by the number of men and women it possesses who are 

 enabled to lead intellectual lives by their devotion to pure science — 

 quite apart from its technical or economic applications — to paint- 

 ing, music, poetry, and the arts generally. South Africa is at 

 the threshold of great University development, and now is the 

 time to consider what part they shall play in the future develop- 

 ment of astronomical and astrophysical research in the Southern 

 Hemisphere. 



We, in South Africa, are privileged to have stretched before 

 us every night a vista of stars which cannot be seen from the great 

 northern observatories, and the study of the southern skies is a 

 necessary complement to that of the northern skies. Are we to 

 do our part in reading the pages of the great book stretched before 

 us, or shall we wait until northern observatories establish offshoots 

 in our country to read the riddles of the heavens for us ? The 

 answer depends largely on our Universities and on our rich men 

 and women. Will those possessed of surplus wealth devote it to 

 the intellectual development of South Africans, or will they take 

 it away to spend on their own pleasures ? The largest telescope we 

 have in South Africa, the gift of the late Mr. Frank McClean, of 

 Tunbridge Wells, England, is now a quarter of a century old, and 

 in size and light-gathering power is quite inadequate to attack 

 many problems which now face the astronomer. Even if we had 

 a Mr. Hooker at this moment to donate a sum of money for a big 

 glass disc, and others to follow with donations for a mounting and 

 an observatory, it would be many years before the instrument could 

 be completed, and what of the men to use it? Are our Universi- 

 ties fostering an interest in the grandest of all sciences and train- 

 ing men to take advantage of the opportunity should it come to 

 us? If the donors could be found, I should like to see each of our 

 Universities provided, as a beginning, with a six-inch clock-driven 

 equatorial telescope and a star camera, for the use of our students 

 and to encourage them to take a broad outlook on life and on 

 Nature. When we come to consider the earth in its relation to 

 our solar system and our solar system in its relation to the universe 

 we must stand in awe and reverence, but when we consider the 

 myriad forms of life on this speck of dust we call our earth, when 

 we look for example at the marvellous beauty, mechanism, and 

 structure of a butterfly or a flower and how they develop from a 

 tiny egg or a seed, in a way we cannot fathom, we must see that, 

 throughout all, there is something divine. Although man, with 

 his mental and spiritual attributes, transcends every other living 



