THE BIRKBECK INSTITUTION. 225 



bone ; his flesh different flesh ; nay, the very grey matter 

 of his brain, which is said to be concerned in the pro- 

 duction of thought, would have been different from what 

 it now is. The inference is obvious that, should this 

 lecture prove a failure and a bore, or should any hitch 

 occur to cause me to break down in the middle of it, 

 you are bound in common fairness to lay upon the 

 shoulders of Mr. John Birkbeck, who has tampered 

 so seriously with my bodily and mental constituents, a 

 good round share of the blame. 



Thus I seek to shirk responsibility in regard to this 

 lecture ; and I dare say you would forgive me if I went a 

 little further in this somewhat ignoble line. It is the 

 fashion of the hour. Some of England's most con- 

 spicuous sons at the present day would seem to trace 

 their moral pedigree to that mean old gardener who 

 threw upon his wife the whole blame of eating the for- 

 bidden fruit. In reference to the present occasion, I 

 wrote to Mr. Norris from the Alps, asking him to choose 

 between a purely scientific lecture and an address based 

 on the experiences of my own life. He chose the latter. 

 I do not, however, ask you to blame Mr. Norris, but to 

 blame me if a chapter from the personal history of a 

 worker, instead of proving a stimulus and an aid, should 

 seem to you flat, stale, -and unprofitable. 



Every operation of husbandry, every stroke of states- 

 manship, every movement of philanthropy, to be effec- 

 tual and successful, must be executed at the proper 

 time. If we sow in the autumn what ought to be sown 

 in the spring, or if we sow in the spring what ought to 

 be sown in the autumn, we can only reap disappoint- 

 ment. Every public movement is tested by the ques- 

 tion, ' Does it live ? ' and this may be translated into the 

 question, Does it grow? ' For growth and multiplication 

 constitute the evidence of life. Brought to this test 



