ADDRESS. 17 
Colleges should at least show a Pisgah view of this Land of Promise, 
which stretches far beyond the Jordan of examinations and competitions. 
V. Science and Industry. 
In the popular mind the value of science is measured by its applica- 
tions to the useful purposes of life. It is no doubt true that science 
wears a beautiful aspect when she confers practical benefits upon man. 
But truer relations of science to industry are implied in Greek mythology. 
Vulcan, the god of industry, wooed science, in the form of Minerva, with 
a passionate love, but the chaste goddess never married, although she 
conferred upon mankind nearly as many arts as Prometheus, who, like 
other inventors, saw civilisation progressing by their use while he lay 
groaning in want on Mount Caucasus. The rapid development of industry 
in modern days depends on the applications of scientific knowledge, 
while its slower growth in former times was due to experiments being 
made by trial and error in order to gratify the needs of man. Then an 
experiment was less a questioning of Nature than an exercise on the mind 
of the experimentalist. Fora true questioning of Nature only arises when 
intellectual conceptions of the causes of phenomena attach themselves to 
ascertained facts as well as to their natural environments. Much real 
science had at one time accumulated in Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Arabia, 
though it became obscured by the intellectual darkness which spread 
_ over Europe like a pall for many centuries. The mental results of Greek 
science, filtered through the Romans and Arabians, gradually fertilised 
the soil of Europe. Even in ages which are deemed to be dark and un- 
' prolific, substantial though slow progress was made. By the end of the 
fifteenth century the mathematics of the Alexandrian school had become 
_ the possession of Western Europe; Arabic numerals, algebra, trigo- 
nometry, decimal reckoning, and an improved calendar having been 
added to its stock of knowledge. The old discoveries of Democritus and 
_ Archimedes in physics, and of Hipparchus and Ptolemy in astronomy, 
_ were producing their natural developments, though with great slowness. 
_ Many manufactures, growing chiefly by experience, and occasionally 
- lightened up by eee of science throughout the prevailing dark- 
ness, had arisen before the sixteenth century. ys knowledge of the pro- 
perties of bodies, though scarcely of their relations to each other, came 
through the labours of the alchemists, who had a mighty impulse to 
work, for by the philosopher’s stone, often not larger than half a rape- 
seed, they hoped to attain the three sensuous conditions of human enjoy- 
ment, gold, health, and immoriality. By the end of the fifteenth century 
Many important manufactures were founded by empirical experiment, 
with only the uncertain guidance of science. Among these were the 
compass, printing, paper, gunpowder, guns, watches, forks, knitting- 
needles, horseshoes, bells, wood cutting and copper engraving, wire- 
drawing, steel, table glass, spectacles, microscopes, glass mirrors backed 
by amalgams of tin and lead, windmills, crushing and saw mills. These 
1885. C 
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