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tied up too closely to this title ; I invite you rather to join me on a 

 mental afternoon's excursion, with the phrase, " The Analogies and 

 Contrasts of Human and Divine Science," as the general chart for our 

 walk, and as a guide to bring us safely home if we should chance to 

 wander or to lose ourselves. 



I commence with a smcere apology for my apparent audacity in 

 presuming to speak on the subject of Science ; but a person, who years 

 ago was more or less conversant with the elements of some few branches, 

 may be able at least to take account of the progress which Science has 

 made and is making, even though he be altogether unable to keep pace 

 with it : just as an old post by the side of a stream may give us some 

 notion of the rate at which the stream is running, though it remains hard 

 and fast in its position. I think I have on some former occasion, 

 though I forget when, quoted an amusing observation of the late 

 Professor Sedgwick, who congratulated the Cambridge Philosophical 

 Society on the evidence of mathematical progress, which was to be 

 found in the fact that he himself had not been able to understand any 

 memoir that had been read before it for some twenty years. So I also in 

 my humbler way can mark the progress of science, while unable to 

 follow it. I cannot quite say Non eqiddem invideo : miror magis. 

 Certainly miror : perhaps to a certain extent invideo. The pleasure of 

 investigation by means of those powerful helps which mathematical 

 science supplies, or even of reading and understanding what has been 

 done by others, is such as perhaps only mathematicians can duly, or 

 even approximately, appreciate. Such pleasure can never again be 

 mine ; yet it is a pleasure of memory to have once known that of which 

 I speak. 



In this condition of scientific helplessness, it is a great satisfaction 

 to be able to turn to such a book as Professor Tait's " Lectures on 

 some Recent Advances in Physical Science." I shall make free use of 

 this volume, partly because it supplies in a very convenient form the 

 kind of material which I require for the purpose of some portion of this 

 address, partly because the author is a genuine scientific man, and one 

 who does not confound real advance in science with mere speculation or 



