ADDRESS. » 



mere ' confused development ' of the mind of the age. It is indeed a new 

 attempt of science in its maturer years to grapple with those mysterious 

 questions of origins which occupied it in the days of its infancy, and 

 it is to be hoped that it may not, like the Titans of ancient fable, be 

 hurled back from heaven, or like the first mother find the knowledge 

 to which it aspires a bitter thing. In any case we should fully under- 

 stand the responsibility which we incur when in these times of full-grown 

 ■science we venture to deal with the great problem of origins, and should 

 be prepared to find that in this field the new philosophy, like those which 

 have preceded it, may meet with very imperfect success. The agita- 

 tion of these subjects has already brought science into close relations, 

 sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, it is to be hoped in the end help- 

 ful, with those great and awful questions of the ultimate destiny of 

 humanity, and its relations to its Creator, which must always be nearer 

 to the human heart than any of the achievements of science on its own 

 ground. In entering on such questions we should proceed with caution 

 and reverence, feeling that we are on holy ground, and that though, like 

 Moses of old, we may be armed with all the learning of our time, we are in 

 the presence of that which while it burns is not consumed ; of a mystery 

 which neither observation, experiment, nor induction can ever fully solve. 

 In a recent address, the late President of the Royal Society called 

 attention to the fact that within the lifetime of the older men of science 

 of the present day, the greater part of the vast body of knowledge 

 included in the modern sciences of physics, chemistry, biology, and 

 geology, has been accumulated, and the most important advances 

 made in its application to such common and familiar things as the rail- 

 way, ocean navigation, the electric telegraph, electric lighting, the tele- 

 phone, the germ theory of disease, the use of anesthetics, the processes 

 of metallurgy, and the dyeing of fabrics. Even since the last meeting 

 in this city, much of this great work has been done, and has led to 

 general results of the most marvellous kind. What at that time could 

 have appeared more chimerical than the opening up by the enterprise of 

 one British colony of a shorter road to the East by way of the extreme 

 west, realising what was happily called by Milton and Cheadle ' the 

 new North-west Passage,' making Japan the next neighbour of Canada 

 on the west, and ofiering to Britain a new way to her Eastern pos- 

 sessions ; or than the possibility of this Association holding a successful 

 meeting on the other side of the Atlantic ? To have ventured to predict 

 such things in 1865, would have appeared quite visionary, yet we are 

 now invited to meet in Australia, and may proceed thither by the 

 Canadian Pacific Railway and its new lines of steamers, returning by 

 the Suez Canal.* To-day this is quite as feasible as the Canadian 



' It is expected that, on the completion of the connections of the Canadian Pacific 

 Eailway, the time from ocean to ocean may be reduced to 116 hours, and from London 

 to Hong Kong to twenty-seven days. 



