ADDEESS 



BY 



Sib NORMAN LOCKYER, K.C.B., LL.D., F.R.S., 



COBRESPONDANT DE L'InSTITUT DK FrAXCE, 

 PRESIDENT. 



The Influence of Brain-j)ower on History. 



My first duty to-night is a sad one. I have to refer to a great loss which 

 this nation and this Association have sustained. By the death of the 

 great Englishman and great statesman who has just passed away we 

 members of the British Association are deprived of one of the most 

 illustrious of our Past-Presidents. We have to mourn the loss of an 

 enthusiastic student of science. We recognise that as Prime Minister 

 he was mindful of the interests of science, and that to him we owe a more 

 general recognition on the part of the State of the value to the nation of 

 the work of scientific men. On all these grounds you will join in tho 

 expression of respectful sympathy with Lord Salisbury's family in their 

 great personal loss which your Council has embodied this morninw in a 

 resolution of condolence. 



Last year, when this friend of science ceased to be Prime 

 Minister, he was succeeded by another statesman who also has given 

 many proofs of his devotion to philosophical studies, and has shown 

 in many utterances that he has a clear understanding of the real place 

 of science in modern civilisation. We, then, have good grounds for 

 hoping that the improvement in the position of science in this country 

 which we owe to the one will also be the care of his successor, who has 

 honoured the Association by accepting the unanimous nomination of your 

 Council to be your President next year, an acceptance which adds a new 

 lustre to this Chair. 



On this we may congratulate ourselves all the more because I think, 

 although it is not generally recognised, that the century into which we 

 have now well entered may be more momentous than any which has 

 preceded it, and that the present history of the woi-ld is being so largely 

 moulded by the influence of brain-power, which in these modern days has 

 \o do with natural as well as human forces and laws, that statesmen and 



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