PEOCEEDINGS FOE 1891. XXXIII 



resident fellowships. Canadians, too, who have gone abroad do not forget the duty they owe to the 

 dear natal soil. George Munro succeeded in business in New York that he might make Dalhousie Col- 

 lege the intellectual lighthouse of Halifax. If this is considered a modern instance of spoiling the 

 Egyptians, it will probably convince students of Dalhousie at any rate that there is something to be 

 said for the action of the ancient Israelites that has often been considered indefensible. 



I must, however, go on to consider the Eoyal Society itself. It is in reality a union of several 

 academies, as Dr. Sterry Hunt pointed out, and for two of these, at any rate, it is scarcely necessary 

 to say a word. Everyone recognizes the necessity of societies for encouraging scientific research. 

 Whether these should cousist of a small fixed number of members like the Eoyal Societies of London 

 and Edinburgh, the Eoj'al Irish Academy and the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, 

 or whether they should be on the basis of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 

 and throw the doors open to all interested in learning or its diffusion, is a matter on which different 

 opinions may be held. But all agree that there are special reasons for the formation of scientific 

 societies, and that whether constituted on the one basis or the other, they have vindicated their right 

 to exist and to be generously supported. " The man of letters," pleads Dr. Starry Hunt, " may hope 

 to find in a publisher and a reading public encouragement and pecuniary recompense for his labour ; 

 but the student of science, though he may perchance gain fame, has little hope for such rewards. 

 . . . He aaks only for generous criticism and means of put)lication." It may be added that criticism 

 from fellow-workers assembled in council is almost indispensable and that his paper when published 

 will be read by only a limited circle. And yet few expenditures of public money are more profitable 

 to the State than that which provides for the publication of scientific papers. There is, too, every 

 reason why Canadian natural history should be organized in a strong society. Vast regions of 

 our country, stretching from the lakes to the Arctic Ocean and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 

 are unexplored. These j)resent important questions, that will take many years for solution in regard 

 to geological structure, ore deposits, the floras and faunas of sea and shore, of land, lakes, prairies and 

 mountains, and other matters connected with geography and natural history. The section that deals 

 with mathematics, physics and chemistry cannot make this special Canadian claim. Those sciences 

 belong to no one country. But at any rate our workers in those fields need the same stimulus and 

 aid that is given elsewhere, and their reputation is dear to them and to us as Canadians. 



But the Eoyal Society has a literary as well as a scientific side, and its literary side is also sub- 

 divided into two sections. In its case, however, the line of division is language and not subjects. At 

 first sight this seems indefensible. Canada is one country, and for literature there can be only one 

 language. Homer, the Hebrew prophets, Dante, Shakespeare, Molière, Goethe, used different tongues, 

 but to the literary man they speak the same language. They have all entered into his life-blood, and 

 he could no more separate what he owes to one from what ho owes to another than he could sejjarato 

 the red from the white corpuscles of the blood that runs in his veins. It is the same with his debt to 

 the great masters of his own day. Victor Hugo, Eobcrt Browning and Tolstoi speak the same uni- 

 versal language in the tones of the nineteenth centurj'. They fill the life of every student with the 

 larger currents of the great social organism of which he is a self-conscious cell. They enable him to 

 see his own time " with other, larger ej-es," and thus cultivate in him that detachment of judgment 

 from all that is selfish and partisan, possessing which he can act his own part in life more grandly 

 than he otherwise would. Literature gives a culture that science alone cannot give ; for science has 

 to do with nature, whereas literature deals with man, and it is impossible to reflect too often on the 

 truth that in the world there is nothing great but man, and in man nothing great but mind. 



There were, however, and there still are, sufficient reasons for the division of literature into two 

 sections. If we could speak French as freely and accurately as our French-Canadian comjmtriots speak 

 English, it might be unnecessary. But we cannot. Our education was neglected, and we are now 

 too stupid to learn. I hope that it shall be otherwise with our children. It is said that when two 

 successive ministers from the United States to France in the eighteenth century were, the one deaf 



Proc. 1891. E. 



