PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
Address of the President of the Royal Society of Canada at the 
Toronto meeting, May 27, 1902. 
THE UNIVERSITIES IN RELATION TO RESEARCH. 
It is now many years since I came to the conclusion that the 
provision of adequate facilities for research is one of the prime neces- 
sities of university education in Canada; and it is with the object 
of accelerating the movement which has already begun in this direction 
that I have selected the relation of the universities to research as the 
topic of my remarks on this occasion. 
It will, perhaps, be expedient for me at the outset to say that 
I propose to use the word research in its widest meaning, 1.6, as 
indicating those efforts of the human mind which result in the exten- 
sion of knowledge, whether such efforts are exerted in the field of 
literature, of science or of art. It is a common mistake to apply 
the term research to what we somewhat erroneously denominate as 
“science,” meaning thereby the physical and natural sciences. This 
limitation is comparatively modern, and science so defined is after 
all only a part of human knowledge. 
The limits of research in its widest sense are coterminous with 
the knowable, and research itself is of very ancient date. The fund 
of knowledge accumulated even before the Christian era was enorin- 
ous. This great fund, however, remained stationary, or nearly 
so, throughout the Dark and Middle Ages. During this period of 
mental stagnation, authority was the watchword of the learned. All 
knowledge was supposed to have been already discovered, and the 
efforts of the schoolmen were devoted to the application of this body 
of truth to life and conduct. This medieval point of view has been 
quaintly and aptly put by Chaucer: 
Out of olde feldies, as man saieth, 
Comith all this newe corne from yere to yearn; 
And out of olde bokis, in good faithe, 
Comith all this newe science that menne learn. 
With the Renaissance began a new epoch, an epoch in the midst 
of which we are still living. It marked, as has been well said, “the 
Proc. 1902. D. 
