SOUTH AFRICAN ASSOCIATION. 3 



of opposition to encounter at its coming to birth. Those who interpreted 

 Science primarily in the mediaeval sense as being limited to the sciences 

 of introspection had still but scant respect for the claims of the sciences 

 of observation. When in the second year of its existence the Association 

 visited Oxford, Keble protested vigorously against the University's 

 reception of what he called a hodge-podge of philosophers. This hodge- 

 podge, be it noted, included Brewster and Dalton and Faraday. But 

 the Association did not react into narrowness. It remained true to the 

 broad conception of Scientia which was held by its founders, one of whom 

 affirmed in striking language at the first meeting, that ' The chief inter- 

 preters of nature have always been those who have grasped the widest 

 fields of inquiry, who have listened with the most universal curiosity to 

 all information, and felt an interest in every question which the one 

 great system of nature represents.' The Association has imposed no 

 narrow restrictions on the extension of the sphere of its activity ; within 

 that ever-widening sphere it has maintained a spirit of co-operation 

 between workers in diverse fields which has been worthy of the best 

 traditions of Francis Bacon. It has had its reward — in greater efiective- 

 ness of work in its own sphere, and in the permeation of the Kingdom of 

 Learning with the atmosphere of goodwill. By way of illustration of 

 this last point, may I, as one whose first allegiance is to the Classics, 

 mention the fact that the roll of twenty-six Presidents of the Classical 

 Association of England includes five Fellows of the Royal Society, names 

 such as Geikie, Osier, and D'Arcy Thomson, and if it is not too pre- 

 sumptuously personal to refer to it, I would add, that when the South 

 African Association elected me as its President, it chose one who was 

 then President of the Classical Association of South Africa. 



Lastly, I would select as characteristic of the British Association its 

 success in maintaining the contacts of Science with the public on the one 

 hand and the state on the other. One of the aims which its founders set 

 forth was ' to obtain more general attention for the objects of Science ' ; 

 they sought to create a body which would make its appeal to the educated 

 public as a whole, to fashion an instrument for the interpretation of the 

 sometimes highly technical results of scientific investigation to the man in 

 the street. They realised that the scientist received much from the 

 public, that to the public he must freely give, and that the giving would 

 not be without its due reward of new inspiration and renewed enthusiasms. 

 There were some who opposed the nascent Association in the fear that 

 Science might degrade itself by making too popular an appeal. That 



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