president's address SECTION I. 183 



desired to know what book he had selected for this Highland 

 nymph. 'They never adverted,' said he, 'that I had 

 no choice in the matter. I have said that I presented 

 her with a book, which I happened to have about me." 

 And what was this book .'' My readers, prepare your features 

 for merriment. It was Cocker's Arithmetic ! Wherever 

 this was mentioned there was a loud laugh, at which Dr. 

 Johnson, when present, used sometimes to be a little angry. 

 One day when we were dining at General Oglethorpe's, 

 where we had many a valuable day, I ventured to interrogate 

 him — " But, Sir, is it not somewhat singular that you should 

 happen to have Cocker's Arithmetic about you on your 

 journey ? What made you buy such a book at Inverness?" 

 He gave me a very sufficient answer. "Why, Sir, if you are 

 to have but one book with you upon a journey, let it be a 

 book of science. When you have read through a book of 

 entertainment you know it, and it can do no more for you ; 

 but a book of science is inexhaustible." Cocker, a book of 

 science ! How far away is that journey to the Hebrides ! 

 Can you imagine Mr. Matthew Arnold or even Mr. Carlyle 

 presenting his landlord's daughter, except in a spirit of banter, 

 with a copy of Barnard Smith or Colenso ? If we carry our 

 researches back earlier than the eighteenth century, we find 

 that Chaucer uses the word science in the general sense 

 of knowledge, so does the author of Piers the Plowman ; 

 Shakspeare speaks of music and mathematics as sciences 

 but science in the singular is with him equivalent to know- 

 ledge. Milton in his poetry uses science once. Addressing 

 the Tree of Knowledge, the Tempter says : — 



" O sacred, wise, and wisdom-giving plant ! 

 Mother of science ! " 



— (P.L., ix., 680.) 



Milton also uses an adjective, "sciential," which has not 

 lived. The strangest use of the word science, in its old 

 sense, is in the translation of the Bible — " avoiding profane 

 and vain babblings and oppositions of science, falsely so- 

 called." (1 Tim., vi., 21.) Here the Greek word is ^vwo-tc, 

 knowledge, and it is used by St. Paul with especial reference 

 to the Gnostic heresies, beginning to be rampant. How 

 many sermons have been preached on that text in the days 

 when the opposition, or supposed opposition, between religion 

 and science was fiercely accentuated ! Now there seems to 

 be a truce in the fighting, and many of the soldiers of the 

 two forces fraternise, as Mr. Gleig tells us French and 



