10 ANNUAL MEETING. 



patience and humility. The danger, in regard to all progress, is 

 of being in too great a hurry, and therefore patience is a thing 

 we should cultivate. " Genius is of long patience," as a French 

 philosopher said, and it is perfectly true, when we come to consider 

 the infinite perplexities and difficulties of many of the questions that 

 we endeavour to solve and the marvellous abyss of ignorance in 

 which we are ; because, after all, when we have gained the 

 faintest conception of what the force of gravitation is (I mean. the 

 real basis of it), and are familiar with its most elementary points, 

 we know nothing. I think, therefore, we may learn patience in 

 giving time to find out what little we know, and humility when 

 we are face to face with the infinite mysteries of Nature, inasmuch 

 as we have learnt the infinite littleness of man. 



I cannot help feeling, in reference to the recent awful calamities 

 in the West Indies, that great as our attainments and our know- 

 ledge may beef Nature its forces are infinitely greater. [Applause.] 



