APPENDIX A LI 



to the service of the imagination; its ethical powers are secondary, 

 though important; and it cannot be forced to prove its utility. Litera- 

 ture engaged with the creation of beauty is ageless. The biological 

 notions of Elizabeth's day are merely objects of curiosity, but Mar- 

 lowe, Webster and Shakespeare are living forces. Sir Thomas 

 Browne's medical knowledge is useless, but his "Urn Burial" is a 

 wonder and a delight. Created, beauty persists; it has the eternal r 

 element in its composition, and seems to tell us more of the secret 

 of the universe than philosophy or logic. But Letters will always 

 envy Science its busyness with material things, and its glowing results 

 which have rendered possible many of the imaginative excursions 

 which poetry, for example, has made into the unknown. 



It would be difficult, nay, impossible, to change radically the 

 methods of pure literature working in the stufï of the imagination. 

 New ideas can be absorbed, new analogies can be drawn, new imagery 

 can be invented, but the age-old methods of artistic expression will 

 never be superseded. Apart from pure literature, or Belles Lettres, 

 those subjects allotted to our section which are capable of scientific 

 treatment, History, for instance, show a remarkable development. 

 The former story-telling function of History and the endless re- 

 weaving of that tissue of tradition which surrounded and obscured 

 the life of a people has given place to a higher conception of the duty 

 of the Historian and the obligation to accept no statement without 

 the support of documentary evidence. The exploration and study 

 of archives and the collation of original contemporaneous documents 

 are now held to be essential, and the partisan historian fortified with 

 bigotry and blind to all evidence uncongenial to his preconceptions 

 is an extinct being. International effort and co-operation have taken 

 the place of jealous sectionalism and the desire to unfold the truth 

 has displaced the craze to prove a theory. The new Science of 

 History has its material in archives and collections of original docu- 

 ments, and one must here refer to the growth of our own Dominion 

 collections under the guidance of an Archivist who is one of us, and 

 who is aided by other distinguished Fellows of the Society. It should 

 be remarked that one of the objects set forth by our charter was to 

 assist in the collection of archives and to aid in the formation of a 

 National Museum of Ethnology, Archaeology and Natural History. 

 Let us not weaken for a moment in the discharge of this obligation. 

 The Archives and the Museum exist largely owing to the influence of 

 our Society, exerted constantly with great pressure, and, in times of 

 necessity, with grave insistence. The Museum needs we consider 

 highly important, and, as you are all aware, we intend to assist the 



