2 DR. THOMAS STERRY HUNT ON THE 
Academy—at first consisting of fifty, and now practically limited to one hundred members 
(a number which it has not yet attained)—the domain of letters is unrepresented ; while 
the Royal Society of London is, in like manner,—although scholars and statesmen seek the 
honors of its fellowship,—essentially an Academy of Sciences. 
Our infant organization attempts a larger plan, and embraces with the mathematical 
and physical sciences, letters, philosophy, and history, imitating the Royal Irish Academy, 
which, like this, is divided into two classes; that of the Sciences, on the one hand, and that 
of Polite Literature and Antiquities on the other. The Institute of France, made up of five 
Academies, embraces the Fine Arts in its still wider scheme. The second class of our Society. 
with its two sections, aspires to cover the same ground as the Academy of Sciences of the 
Institute of France, the Science division of the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal Society of 
London, and the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. 
The two sections into which our second class is now divided, namely, III, including 
Mathematic, Physic and Chemistry, and IV., embracing Biology and Geology, are in their 
aims and their objects closely related to each other, and widely separated from Sections I. 
and IL, which are devoted respectively to French and English Literature and History, ~ 
Differences in language thus establish in the literary department of this society a natural 
division into two sections. In the department of the sciences, however, there is no natural 
basis for a similar division, and it will probably be found in the near future that subjects of 
common interest will draw more and more closely together our two sections, until, as in the 
various societies which we have named, the distinction between mathematical, physical and 
chemical studies on the one hand, and geological and biological studies on the other, will be 
lost sight of. It seems to me, therefore, fitting that we should in this time and place consider 
the mutual relations of these two divisions, and inquire into the value of the distinctions 
upon which they have been based. 
Apart from pure mathematic, which is based on our intuitions of space, the sciences 
which now concern us have to do with material nature, and are properly called natural 
sciences. It is not their province to look behind or beyond the material world of nature, 
nor to grapple with the mystery of the Infinite, with which, in the last analysis, the inquirer 
always finds himself face to face. Our various metaphysical systems are schemes which 
men have devised to solve this mighty problem, and to translate into intelligible language 
their efforts to comprehend it. What we call Nature is at once a mantle and a veil, in which 
the spiritual clothes and conceals itself. “I weave,” Goethe makes the world-spirit say, 
“the living garment of the Deity.” This phrase embodies a profound truth. All nature is 
living ; it is, as the word zatura itself, equally with its Greek equivalent, physis, implies, 
that which is growing, the perpetually-becommg or being born; and this sense, which 
underlies etymologically the words #atural and physical, should never be lost sight of. 
Tt is a common reproach in the mouths of certain cavillers at science that it does not 
explain the beginnings of life in matter. That the plant and the animal are living, is evident 
to them, but they assume that the air, the water and the earth, the elements from which the 
plant grows and is fed, are dead; that life is a mysterious something which comes from 
without, and is extraneous to the organism. Perhaps we may trace the origin of this con- 
ception to the ancient legend, which appears in more than one form, of a human body 
fashioned out of dead matter and waiting for vivifying breath or fire. The student of 
