THIRD ORDINARY MEETING. 33 
satisfied deliverances has done much to bring science into disrepute. 
It cannot be too strongly urged that no man can teach what he does 
not know. Self evident as the proposition seems, experience con- 
stantly shews that it is in danger of being ignored. 
With some again popular science is another name for scientific 
fooling. They seem to think that the popular stomach is unable to 
digest anything but froth. “Strong meat is for men and milk for 
babes,” but these people feed their scientific infants not on good 
wholesome milk, but on sugar plums and curry powder. Their 
children ery for bread and they give them a Pharoah’s Serpent ! 
None the less, however, is it a matter of the highest moment that 
sound scientific instruction should be given to the public, that the 
truths laid hold of by the few should be made known to the many, 
that science should be no esoteric possession of the favoured few, 
but should become the heritage of the world. 
The vastness of the practical benefits which the application of 
scientific discoveries and scientific principles to practical life has 
brought in the past, and is likely to bring in the future, is one most 
cogent reason for the more general dissemination of these discoveries 
and principles. 
If we try to picture to ourselves the condition of society at the 
end of the 17th century, when Savery exhibited before the Royal 
Society a model of his engine for Raising Water by Fire, and com- 
pare it with that with which we are now familiar, when the great 
agents of Heat, Light and Electricity have been brought by the aid 
of science into such wonderful subjection to the wants of mankind ; 
and if we try to pierce with prophetic vision into the mists of the 
future, and speculate upon the gigantic possibilities which the light 
of science, brightening every hour, seems to render visible before us, 
we may well be impressed with the necessity of disseminating a know- 
ledge of science as a means of benefiting the human race. 
But besides the practical advantage to be derived from the spread 
of scientific information, it has a highly important reflex action upon 
the scientific investigator. 
Man will not work without a motive, and the applause of a dis- 
criminating public is one very strong incentive to exertion in science 
as in every other field of labour. It is true that some men love 
knowledge for its own sake, and that the most successful workers 
are likely to be those who are enamoured of their labour. But for 
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