xevl REPORT —1874. 
stimulus of a non-scientific ideal. This was the case among the ancients, and 
it has been so amongst oursclves. Mayer, Joule, and Colding, whose names 
are associated with the greatest of modern generalizations, were thus influ- 
enced. With his usual insight, Lange at one place remarks, that “it is not 
always the objectively correct and intelligible that helps man most, or leads 
most quickly to the fullest and truest knowledge. As the sliding body upon 
the brachystochrone reaches its end sooner than by the straighter road of the 
inclined plane, so through the swing of the ideal we often arrive at the naked 
truth more rapidly than by the more direct processes of the understanding.” 
Whewell speaks of enthusiasm of temper as a hindrance to science ; but he 
means the enthusiasm of weak heads. There is a strong and resolute enthu- 
siasm in which science finds an ally; and it is to the lowering of this 
fire, rather than to the diminution of intellectual insight, that the lessening 
productiveness of men of science in their mature years is to be ascribed. 
Mr. Buckle sought to detach intellectual achievement from moral force. He 
gravely erred; for without moral force to whip it into action, the achieve- 
ments of the intellect would be poor indeed. 
It has been said that science divorces itself from literature ; but the state- 
ment, like so many others, arises from lack of knowledge. A glance at the 
less technical writings of its leaders—of its Helmholtz, its Huxley, and its 
Du Bois-Reymond—would show what breadth of literary culture they com- 
mand. Where among modern writers can you find their superiors in clear- 
ness and vigour of literary style? Science desires not isolation, but freely 
combines with every effort towards the bettering of man’s estate. Single- 
handed, and supported not by outward sympathy, but by inward force, it has 
built at least one great wing of the many-mansioned home which man in his 
totality demands. And if rough walls and protruding rafter-ends indicate 
that on one side the edifice is still incomplete, it is only by wise combination 
of the parts required with those already irrevocably built that we can 
hope for completeness. There is no necessary incongruity between what 
has been accomplished and what remains to be done. The moral glow of 
Socrates, which we all feel by ignition, has in it nothing incompatible with 
the physics of Anaxagoras which he so much scorned, but which he would 
hardly scorn to-day. And here I am reminded of one amongst us, hoary, but 
still strong, whose prophet-voice some thirty years ago, far more than any other 
of this age, unlocked whatever of life and nobleness lay latent in its most gifted 
minds—one fit to stand beside Socrates or the Maccabean Eleazar, and to dare 
and suffer all that they suffered and dared—fit, as he once said of Fichte, “ to 
have been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed of Beauty and 
Virtue in the groves of Academe.” With a capacity to grasp physical prin- 
ciples which his friend Goethe did not possess, and which even total lack of 
exercise has not been able to reduce to atrophy, it is the world’s loss that, he, 
in the vigour of his years, did not open his mind and sympathies to science, 
and make its ecnclusions a portion of his message to mankind. Marvel- 
lously endowed as he was—equally equipped on the side of the Heart and of 
the Understanding—he might have done much towards teaching us how to 
reconcile the claims of both, and to enable them in coming times to dwell 
together in unity of spirit and in the bond of peace. 
And now the end is come. With more time, or greater strength and 
knowledge, what has been here said might have been better said, while 
worthy matters here omitted might have received fit expression. But there 
would have been no material deviation from the views set forth. As regards 
myself, they are not the growth of a day; and as regards you, I thought you 
