206 Colonel Sir Ronald Ross [June 4, 



WEEKLY EVEXIXG MEETING, 



Friday, June 4, 1920. 



Sir James Crichtox-Browxe, J.P. M.D. LL.D. D.Sc. F.R.S., 

 Treasurer and Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Coloxel Sir Ronald Ross, K.C.B. K.C.M.G. F.R.S. 



Science and Poetry. 



In the forefront of my dissertation to-night, let me thank those who 

 so ably conduct the affairs of the Royal Institution for the honour 

 they have done me — and the kindness they have done me — by 

 inviting me to address you upon a theme which has always been 

 much more congenial to me than is another with which you will 

 perhaps more readily connect me. Twenty years ago I had the 

 privilege of telling you about the great good fortune which had 

 then just befallen Science when she discovered how malaria, that 

 tyrant of the whole tropical world, maintains his empire over us ; 

 and years later I informed you, with some anger (as I remember), of 

 the difficulties which we experienced in persuading our comfortable 

 countrymen to employ that knowledge for the defeat of the enemy. I 

 am now asked to address you upon a very different and perhaps a 

 still mightier theme, that of Science and Poetry ; and you may query 

 at the outset what connection there is between all these matters, and 

 what right have I, individually, to speak upon them. 



In answer I would point out that this Institution, which for a 

 hundred and twenty years has kept burning the Vestal Fire of the 

 human intellect in this country — a fire which often smoulders so 

 dimly in the hearts of our people— that this Institution has always 

 upheld what I take to be the first charter of the spirit of man, the 

 right to soar (or to sink) in whatsoever direction it pleases. The 

 object of the Institution has always been to promote the study both 

 of science and of literature. It does not concede to the fashion of 

 the day that would fasten the blight of Indian caste upon us ; that 

 would make us either literary men or scientific men, either business 

 men or professional men, either tinkers or tailors. Not only have its 

 members heard in this hall regarding every advance in science almost 

 as soon as made, but they have also listened to Coleridge speaking on 

 poetry in 1807 and 1808, and to Campbell on the same theme from 



