THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 363 
It is the intention of the Council of the Canadian Institute to 
arrange for two short courses of public lectures this winter. One of 
these courses will be scientific, the other literary. What the Council 
aims at is to perform somewhat the same kind of work as is done by 
the Royal Institution and some similar societies in London. The 
Council asks for the cordial assistance of the friends of the Institute 
in carrying out this scheme, not only on account of the intrinsic 
desirability of having such courses delivered, but also because it 
hopes to be able by means of the surplus of receipts over expenses 
to add to the amount available for improving the museum and 
library. 
I now purpose inviting your attention for a short time to some 
remarks on the relation between progress in physical science and pro- 
gress in other departments of thought and action. It is of course im- 
possible for me to do justice to so vast a subject, in the time at my 
disposal, nor do I flatter myself that I could say very much that is: 
new, if I had time, but I have selected this topic for a few inaugural 
remarks, because discussion of it, however imperfect, wiil throw more 
light on the real importance of societies such as the Canadian Insti- 
tute than anything else which I could say. 
It will in the first place be advisable to obtain a clear idea as to 
what is meant by the word science. Science originally meant 
knowledge, but now it means something more. A man may 
know a great deal about some groups of facts, and yet have no 
scientific knowledge of them. A savage of three-score-and-ten who 
has spent his life in bunting will have a great knowledge of animals, 
but not a scientific knowledge. An accumulation of knowledge 
becomes a science when it is brought into order by the discovery of 
great general statements that enable us to arrange the facts, or by 
the discovery of the laws of certain phenomena. The Savage whom 
I have just mentioned would come to have a scientific knowledge of 
zoology, if he became able to arrange the animals he knew in certain 
classes. In proportion as knowledge becomes systematized it becomes 
science. 
In the next place what is meant by physical as distinguished from 
other science? The physical sciences are those which deal with the 
material universe ; mental and moral science deal with the spiritual 
universe. The term natural science is now often used as synonymous 
with physical science. Originally it meant something quite different. 
