2 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 
the Nautical Almanac. I will not stop to examine this illustration, which 
I personally think rather strained. We may recognise that practical 
utility has been a conscious though not the sole aim in much scientific 
work, and sometimes perhaps its main justification; but we can hardly 
admit that any such formula as I have quoted worthily conveys what 
has been the real inspiration of discovery through the ages. If we may 
go back to Apollonius and the conic sections, we cannot suppose that he 
was thinking of posterity at all; he was engaged in a study which he no 
doubt held to be legitimate and respectable in itself. Or, to take a very 
recent instance, when Faraday and Maxwell were feeling their way to- 
wards an electric theory of light, they could hardly have dreamed of wire- 
less telegraphy, though as we now know this was no remote development. 
The primary aim of science as we understand it is to explore the facts of 
Nature, to ascertain their mutual relations, and to arrange them as far as 
possible into a consistent and intelligible scheme. It is this endeavour 
which is the true inspiration of scientific work, as success in it is the 
appropriate reward. The material effects come later if at all, and often by 
a very indirect path. We may, I think, claim for this constructive task 
something of an esthetic character. The provinces of art and science are 
often held to be alien and even antagonistic, but in the higher processes of 
scientific thought it is often possible to trace an affinity. The mathe- 
matician at all events is at no loss for illustrations of this artistic faculty. 
A well-ordered piece of algebraical analysis has sometimes been compared 
to a musical composition. This may seem fantastic to those whose only 
impression is that of a mass of curious symbols, but these bear no more 
resemblance to the ideas which lie behind them than the equally weird 
notation of a symphony bears to the sounds which it connotes or the 
emotions which these evoke. And it is no misplaced analogy which has led 
enthusiasts to speak of the poetical charm of Lagrange’s work, of the 
massive architecture of Gauss’s memoirs, of the classic perfection of Max- 
well’s expositions. The devotees of other sciences will be at no loss for 
similar illustrations. Is it not the case, for instance, that the widespread 
interest excited by the latest achievements of physical science is due 
not to the hope of future profit, though this will doubtless come, but to 
the intrinsic beauty as well as the novelty of the visions which they 
unfold ? 
It is possible, I trust, to insist on these aspects of the scientific tempera- 
ment without wishing to draw a sharp and even mischievous antithesis 
_between pure and applied science. Not to speak of the enormous importance 
