1869.] The Scientific Year. 79 



cannot be gainsayed. Many years cannot roll away before the 

 power of deduction must be brought to bear in all its strength 

 upon this gathering ; and the generalization of the true philosopher 

 must evoke a new and mighty spirit from the charmed circle, and 

 bind it to do man's bidding 



The physical sciences have been sought to aid the investigations 

 of the physiological student, and some striking facts have been 

 recorded, showing how necessary it is to examine the phenomena 

 of organization in relation with the operation of the physical 

 agencies, Light, Heat, and Electricity, and the laws which regulate 

 chemical affinity. 



Zoology and Botany, Mineralogy and Crystallography, have, 

 during the year, been worked, as it were, in obedience to the same 

 law which has regulated the progress of the other branches of 

 science. Inductive inquuy has been the rule, deductive generaliza- 

 tion the exception. Archasology, Ethnology, and Philology have 

 been jjrogi'essing — we hope with a greatly improved system of 

 inquiry. The poetry of the past is gradually disappearing before 

 a rigid spirit of inquhy, and the history of man, as preserved to us 

 in liis works and in his words, is being won from the grave, from 

 mounds, from the caverns, and the lake-dwellings of buried ages. 



In this brief sketch it has been our object to show that valuable 

 facts have been gathered during the past year, and that much intel- 

 ligence and industry has been expended in carefully labelling those 

 treasures and arranging them for future use. The study of names 

 has been cultivated, to the injury, we believe, of the more enlarged 

 culture of ideas. Still, arguing from the past, through the present, 

 to the future, we are convinced that the time is not far distant 

 when the accumulated materials will be, by the efforts of some 

 philosophic mind, converted — probably by one gigantic effort — 

 into a structure beautiful in its truth and holiness. 



We are advancing steadily towards a realization of the fact that 

 mind, and mind only, is the ultimate source of power. No me- 

 chanical, no physical energy can be available for good to man 

 without the concurrence of mind. Every practical application of 

 science is a sermon on this text — Mind is the master of Matter. 

 We hve under the " Keign of Law ; " but every fact discovered, 

 every speculation of any value uttered, carries forward the never- 

 to-be-controverted truth that Law cannot be without a Law-Giver — 

 consequently, that all the laws which the mind of man is steadily 

 evoking from the arcana of space and time, are the material mani- 

 festations of the energies of one Almighty mind. 



E. H. 



