IXXX REPORT 1866. 



PhilosojAy ought to have no likes or dislikes, truth is her only aim ; hut if 

 a glow of admiration be permitted to a phj'sical inquirer, to my mind a far 

 more exquisite sense of the beautiful is conveyed by the orderly development, 

 by the necessary inter-relation and inter-action of each element of the cosmos, 

 and by the conviction that a bullet falling to the ground changes the dyna- 

 mical couditions of the viniverse, than can he conveyed by mysteries, by con- 

 vulsions, or by cataclysms. 



The sense of understanding is to the educated more gratifying than the 

 love of the marvcUous, though the latter need never be wanting to the nature- 

 seeker. 



But the doctrine of continuity is not solely applicable to physical inquiries. 



The same modes of thought which lead us to see continuity in the field of 

 the microscope as in the universe, in infinity downwards as in infinity up- 

 wards, will lead us to see it in the history of our own race ; the revolu- 

 tionary ideas of the so-caUed natural rights of man, and « priori reason- 

 ing from what are termed first principles, are far more unsound and 

 give us far less ground for improvement of the race tliau the study of the 

 gradual progressive changes arising from changed circumstances, clianged 

 wants, changed habits. Our language, our social institutions, our laws, tlio 

 constitution of which we are proud, are the growth of time, the product of 

 slow adaptations, resulting from continuous struggles. Ilappilj- in this 

 country, practical experience has taught us to improve rather than to remo- 

 del ; we follow the law of nature and avoid cataclysms. 



The superiority of Man over other animals inhabiting this planet, of civi- 

 lized over savage man, and of the more civihzed over the less civilized, is 

 proportioned to the extent which his thought can grasj) of the past and of the 

 future. His memory reaches further back, his cai^ability of prediction reaches 

 further forward in proportion as his knowledge increases. He has not only 

 personal memory which brings to his mind at will the events of liis indivi- 

 dual life, — he has history, the memory of the race ; he has geology, the his- 

 tory of the planet ; he has astronomy, the geology of other worlds. "Whence 

 does the conviction to which I have alluded, that each material form bears 

 in itself the records of its past history, arise? Is it not from the belief in 

 continuity ? Does not the worn hollow on the rock record the action of the 

 tide, its stratified layers the slow deposition by which it was formed, the 

 organic remains imbedded in it the beings living at the times these layers 

 were deposited, so that from a fragment of stone we can get the history of 

 a period myriads of years ago ? From a fragment of bronze we may get the 

 history of our race at a period antecedent to tradition. As science advances 

 our power of reading this history improves and is extended. Saturn's ring 

 may help us to a knowledge of how our solar system developed itself, for it 

 as surely contains that history as the rock contains the record of its own 

 formation. 



By this patient investigation how much have we already learned, which 

 the most civilized of ancient human races ignored ! While in ethics, in 

 politics, in poetry, in sculpture, in painting, we have scarcelj-, if at all, 

 advanced beyond the highest intellects of ancient Greece or Italj% how great 

 are the steps we have made in physical science and its applications ! 



But how much more may we not expect to know ? 



We, this evening assembled. Ephemera as we are, have learned by trans- 

 mitted laboiir, to weigh, as in a balance, other worlds larger and heavier than 

 our own, to know the lengtli of their days and years, to measure their enor- 

 mous distance from us and from each other, to detect and accurately ascertain 



