SCIENCE AND THE THOUGHT OF THE WORLD 



of this Society, have had upon the general life and thought 

 of the world, especially during the last fifty years. 



The untold material benefits which science has conferred 

 upon civilised mankind are too familiar to need mention ; 

 they are always with us, from the world's news upon our 

 breakfast table to our sun-bright evenings. There are, 

 however, other benefits more subtle and less obvious, but 

 not less real and certainly not of less price the wider 

 range of thought and the greater intellectual freedom which 

 have followed upon modern scientific discovery. 



I am justified, surely, in saying that the average way 

 of thinking on all subjects has been as much altered and 

 elevated by the researches and writings of men of science, 

 as have been the common conditions of living. The 

 contrast in what and how we think to-day, as compared 

 with the day on which the Society received its Charter, 

 in 1662, is as great as it is in how we live and travel. 



The changes which have taken place in the scope and 

 mode of national thought, especially during the last fifty 

 years, have been brought about mainly in two ways : 

 by a breaking down of inherited prejudices and of tradi- 

 tional opinions through the results of scientific discovery ; 

 and secondly, by the freer and more direct methods of 

 thinking which have followed from the experimental study 

 of Nature. 



The Royal Society was itself a chief practical outcome 

 of a new spirit, which, during the generation preceding its 



foundation, had arisen at Oxford and elsewhere, and was 



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