SECTION III. 1882. Er Trans. Roy. Soc. CANADA. 
I.—The Relations of the Natural Sciences. 
By THomas STERRY Hunt, M.A., LL.D. (Cantab.), FRS. 
(Read May 25, 1882.) 
The occasion which brings us together is one which should mark a new departure in 
the intellectual history of Canada. Science and letters find but few votaries in a country 
like this, where the best energies of its thinkers are necessarily directed to devising means 
of subduing the wilderness, opening the ways of communication, improving agriculture, 
building-up industries, and establishing upon a proper basis schools in which the youth of 
the country may be instructed in those arts and professions which are among the first needs 
of civilized society. The teachers under such conditions can do little more than interpret 
to their pupils so much of the wisdom of the past, and of contemporary science, as may 
suffice for the immediate wants of the country, and will have but scanty leisure for original 
investigation in the field of knowledge. There are, however, never wanting earnest and 
curious minds who feel an almost irresistible impulse to labor in this field, to enlarge the 
bounds of thought, and to grapple with the great problems of man and nature. To foster 
this spirit, to encourage its beginnings, and to extend the influence of its example, should 
be the aim of wise statesmen and legislators who seek to elevate their kind and ennoble 
their nation: knowing that the brightest glories and the most enduring honors of a country 
are those which come from its thinkers and its scholars. 
The world’s intellectual workers are, from the very nature of their lives of thought and 
study, separated in some degree from the mass of mankind. They feel, however, not less 
than others, the need of human sympathy and co-operation, and out of this need have grown 
academies and learned societies devoted to the cultivation of letters and of science. The 
records of these bodies in Florence, in Rome, in Paris, in London, and elsewhere, are the 
records of scientific progress for the last three centuries. Such bodies do not create thinkers 
and workers, but they give to them a scientific home, a centre of influence, and the means 
of making known to the world the results of their labors. 
It was with a wise forethought that more than acentury since Franklin and his friends 
founded at Philadelphia the American Philosophical Society. Its planting then seemed 
premature, but its vigorous growth during a century has served to show that the seed was 
not too early sown. That, however, unlike many of the academies of the old world, to 
which we have adverted, had no formal recognition from the State, and there came a period 
in the growth of the American Union when the need of an official scientific body was felt. 
Thus it was that nineteen years ago, in the midst of the great civil war, the American Con- 
egress authorized the erection of a National Academy of Sciences, to which, as an American 
citizen, I have the honor to belong. The aim proposed in founding that Academy was to 
gather together what was best and highest in the scientific life of the nation, and moreover 
to organize a body of councillors to which the executive authority could always look for 
advice and direction in scientific matters relating to the interests of the State. In that 
Sec. III., 1882. 1 
