president's address. 13 



other subject that may promote our national advancement. T 

 hope you will not think my subject is running away with me, for 

 tlte experience of the British Association fully justifies us in 

 believing that we may expect all this and much more from our 

 association. We are often told of the influence of science upon 

 material advancement ; l)ut there is another thing that I should 

 like to dwell upon, but that I fear to keep you too long. We 

 hear too little about the influence that scientific work has upon a 

 man's character. There is a science culture as well as a classical 

 culture, and it would be worth while tracing its influence upon 

 those who get it, and through them upon society. And we hear 

 far too little about the influence which science is having upon 

 the young, by exercising their powers of observation and reason 

 on the phenomena of nature around them. Scientific education 

 is spreading through all classes of the community, and slowly 

 Ijut surely, like the advance of every great truth, the world has 

 leai-ned to recognise the fact that science is the great lever in the 

 material advancement of the people ; nay, more, that we cannot 

 have material advancement without a previous advance 

 in science. If we are to have new processes in the arts, new 

 applications of the laws of nature for the wellbeing of mankind, 

 we nmst first have the study of nature and the laws which 

 govern its operations before we can hope to employ tliem for our 

 advantage. In a new country like this, with all its local 

 variations in the laws of nature, its uncultivated forest fi'uits 

 and flowers, its unknown vegetable and mineral wealth, the fact 

 is forced upon us in a thousand ways that we must know or we 

 must suffer. And we use the word science in its comprehensive 

 sense. There have been those who said that the pi'oper study of 

 mankind is man, and who, while strenuously denying to this 

 study the dignity of a science, have thought no other science 

 wortliy of culture. And there have been others who have 

 asserted that man's only study was nature in the things around 

 him, neglecting altogether the science of man. But man and 

 nature are correlative, and, therefore, true science must embrace 

 both studies. And even in the things around us we must not 

 take the vulgar view, which only sees the necessity for 

 cultivating those branches of science that are direct producers 

 of gold and minerals. As a well-known politician in another 

 colony once said to me when I asked him to .spend a few 

 pounds on pure science, " Will it affect the price of beef and 

 mutton'? If not, I won't spend a shilling on it." Unfortunately 

 he is not alone in his opinion ; there are many whose only measure 

 for scientific value is a coin of the realm. If there is to be a true 

 advance of science it will not come from one-sided efforts. Each 

 branch mu.st be pushed forward in its own special direction, and 

 in — what is just as important — its relation to all other branches 

 of science. Science stands or falls as a whole ; if we limit it to 



