ANNUAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXXVII 
chemists, and biologists. Kant’s rule, that in each special branch 
of knowledge the amount of science, properly so called, is equal to 
the amount of mathematics it contains, corresponds to the definition 
of pure science as including mathematics and logic, and nothing 
else. It also corresponds to the distinction which most persons, 
consciously or unconsciously, make between the so-called physical, 
and the natural or biological sciences. Most of us, I presume, have 
for the higher mathematics, and for the astronomers and physicists 
who use them, that profound respect which pertains to comparative 
ignorance, and to a belief that capacity for the higher branches 
of abstract analysis is a much rarer mental quality than are those 
required for the average work of the naturalist. I do not, however, 
propose to discuss the hierarchy of the sciences; and the term science 
is now so generally used in the sense of knowledge, more or less 
accurate, of any subject, more especially in the relations of causes 
and effects, that we must use the word in this sense, and leave to 
the future the task of devising terms which will distinguish the 
sciences, properly so called, from those branches of study and occu- 
pation of which the most that can be said is that they have a scien- 
tific side. It isa sad thing that words should thus become polar- 
ized and spoiled, but there seems to be no way of preventing it. 
In a general way we may say that a scientific man exercises the 
intellectual more than the emotional faculties, and is governed by 
his reason rather than by his feelings. Heshould be a man of both 
general and special culture, who has a little accurate information 
on many subjects and much accurate information on some one or 
two subjects, and who, moreover, is aware of his own ignorance and 
is not ashamed to confess it. 
We must admit that many persons who are known as scientists 
do not correspond to this definition. Have you never heard, and 
perhaps assented to, some such statements as these: “Smith is a 
scientist, but he doesn’t seem to have good, common sense,” or “ he 
is a scientific crank ?” 
The unscientific mind has been defined as one which “is willing 
to accept and make statements of which it has no clear conceptions 
to begin with, and of whose truth it is not assured. It is the state 
of mind where opinions are given and accepted without ever being 
subjected to rigid tests.” Accepting this definition, and also the 
implied definition of a scientific mind as being the reverse of this, 
let us for a moment depart from the beaten track which presi- 
