24 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



If we may trust the story of the fallen apple — and it rests oas 

 the authority of Voltaire — note the importance of reflexion upO'i, 

 and study of the origin of the most simple and ordinary phenomena,. 

 and of the value of suggestion from every source. The history ot 

 Newton's life shews how much even he was indebted to the suggestion, 

 and incentive of his few scientific contemporaries. 



Above all, note his recognition of Man's intellectual limitations^ 

 Newton realised that he had discovered a great law of Nature, and' 

 that, by means of this discovery coupled with observation over a 

 comparatively short period, the motions of the heavenly bodies could' 

 be traced out in all past and future time ; but he felt himself 

 intellectually powerless in face of the question : " By what method! 

 does this action at a distance take place ? " 



" I know not," said he, " what the World will think of my 

 labours, but to myself it seems to me that I have been but as a child' 

 plaving on the seashore ; now finding some pebble rather more- 

 polished, and now some shell rather more agreeably variegated than 

 another, while the immense ocean of truth extended itself unexplored' 

 before me." 



We find a like key-note in the words used by the greatest living 

 scientist of our day — I mean by Lord Kelvin — on the occasion of 

 the celebration of the Jubilee of his Professoriate at Glasgow in 

 1896: "One word characterises the most strenuous of the efforts for 

 the advancement of Science that I have made perseveringly during 

 fiftv-five years ; that word is failure. I know no more of electric 

 and magnetic force or of the relation between ether, electricity and 

 ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity than I knew and tried to 

 teach my students 50 years ago in my first session as a Professor. 

 Something of sadness must come of failure ; but in the pursuit of 

 Science, inborn necessity to make the effort brings with it much of" 

 the certaminis gaudia, and saves the naturalist from being wholly 

 miserable, perhaps even allows him to be fairly happy, in his dailv 

 work. 



" And what splendid compensation for philosophical failures 

 we have had in the admirable discoveries by observation and experi- 

 ment on the properties of matter and in the exquisitely beneficent 

 applications of Science to the use of mankind with which these fifty 

 years have so abounded." 



What are we to derive from these and like expressions of our 

 greatest masters — certainly not discouragement, for the great ocean 

 of truth still remains open for exploration. 



But are there not limitations which we may never hope to pass?' 

 Are the possibilities of scientific knowledge really divisible into the 

 knowable and the unknowable ? 



One may perhaps venture on a conjecture, viz.. that fhe limit of 

 ihc KNOWABLE is a complete mastery of the laws according to 

 which the great agencies of Nature ivork, bid that these agencies 

 themselves are the UNKNOWABLE. 



The conjecture is at least justified by experience, although 1 

 fear it verges dangerously on the shoals of philosophy. 



