PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 49 



of scientific knowledge from which, sooner or later, utilitarian 

 results must necessarily have sprung. 



It is true, as Huxley tells us, that at the beginning of this cen- 

 tury weaving and spinning were still carried on with the old 

 appliances ; true that nobody could travel faster by sea or by land 

 than at any previous time in the world's history, and true that 

 King George could send a message from London to York no 

 faster than King John might have done. Metals were still 

 worked from their ores by immemorial rule of thumb, and the 

 centre of the iron trade of these islands was among the oak for- 

 ests of Sussex, while the utmost skill of the British mechanic did 

 not get beyond the production of a coarse watch. 



It cannot be denied that although the middle of the eighteenth 

 century was illuminated by a host of great names in science, 

 chemists, biologists, geologists, English, French, German, and 

 Italian, the deepening and broadening of natural knowledge had 

 produced next to no immediate practical benefits. Still I cannot 

 believe that Bacon, the prophet, would have been so devoid of 

 scientific insight " as to have failed to foresee at this time the 



o 



ultimate results of all this intellectual activity. 

 But Huxley says : 



fc> Even if, at this time, Francis Bacon could have returned to 

 the scene of his greatness and of his littleness, he must have re- 

 garded the philosophic world which praised and disregarded his 

 precepts with great disfavor. If ghosts are consistent, he would 

 have said, " these people are all wasting their time, just as Gil- 

 bert, and Kepler, and Galileo, and my worthy physician Harvey 

 did in my day. VVhere are the fruits of the restoration of science 

 which I promised? This accumulation of bare knowledge is all 

 very well, but ctii bono? Not one of these people is doing what I 

 told him specially to do, and seeking that secret of the cause of 

 forms, which will enable him to deal at will with matter and 

 superinduce new nature upon old foundations." 



As Huxley, however, proceeds himself to show, in the dis- 

 cussion which immediately follows this passage, a " new nature, 



