399 



health of a member of his family. Others on the list are prevented 

 by various causes from attending our meetings ; and the result has 

 been that the Council felt itself under the necessity of imposing 

 upon me the duty, which I now attenjpt to perform. 



I think you will agree with me, that a Society like ours, insti- 

 tuted for a definite purpose — the advancement of Science and Litera- 

 ture — has, in relation to that purpose, a duty to perform ; and that 

 each member, according to the extent of his ability, is bound in 

 duty to contribute to the energy and action whereby alone the 

 Society, as a whole, can satisfactorily perform its obligations. Now, 

 in relation to the purpose of the Society, the clear understanding of 

 which must go far to determine the character of its duties, it can- 

 not, I think, fail to strike you that for many years our attention has 

 been exclusively directed to what is commonly called Science, — to the 

 abstract, the physical, and the experimental sciences ; while every 

 thing coming under the designation of Literature is altogether ab- 

 sent from our proceedings. Literature, indeed, in its ordinary ac- 

 ceptation, is unsuited to our purpose. It is not desirable that, like 

 the old French Academy, we should invite poets to recite fracrments 

 of some forthcoming epic, or historians to put us in advance of the 

 external world, by communicating the purpurei panni, the heroic 

 portraits, or battle-pieces, of a projected narrative. But I cannot 

 see why the word Science should be restricted to the knowledcre of 

 material objects ; why it should not be extended to all knowledore 

 difficult to acquire, and relating to matters which are interesting to 

 any considerable number of thinking, cultivated minds. It would 

 surely be unjust to refuse the name of science to that philosophy 

 which, in the hands of Smith, Reid, Stewart, and Brown, has done 

 more to raise the character of Scotland as an intellectual nation, than 

 all that she has done, and that is not little, in all the mathematical 

 and physical sciences. And besides this science of mind, there 

 exists a science of the great exponent of mind, of spoken or written 

 language. This, in combination with anatomy, constitutes the 

 science which the British Association have admitted into their cycle 

 under the name of Ethnology. Even those among us who are most 

 absorbed in abstract or physical science may feel some interest in 

 learning to what extent, and how and why it is that a basis of same- 

 ness exists between the languages of a long line of nations extendintr 

 from the Ganges to the Atlantic ; how varieties of this one species 



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