100 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 
liberality to help every effort after truth. Both alike appealed to 
nature at every step of advance. Newton’s great mathematical 
genius gave him the advantage of the Seer. Here Boyle failed; 
but, on the other hand, while Newton’s soul dwelt apart, Boyle’s: 
heart beat with that of his fellow-man. He it was, in chief, who 
first brought the great powers of the social instinct to bear upon 
scientific advance in England—that power which we to-day 
recognise as an essential ally of every movement destined to 
endure. He principally founded the Royal Society of London 
and befriended its early years. The beneficent effects of such 
deeds admit of no evaluation by human judgment. 
The reader of Boyle’s life bears from it yet another impression, 
that his character was as nearly faultless as human nature can 
attain to. His work widened out beyond science. Whatever was 
for the good of humanity and for truth was Boyle’s work. Boyle’s 
greatest failing was, perhaps, the extremes to which he carried his 
utilitarianism. But in this the times themselves were at fault. 
Some will maintain that in the abstract Boyle was right. Science 
was still in her youth, and possessed no such rich store of 
memories as serve to guide the adult science of to-day. ‘The 
important bearing of remote theoretical facts on ultimate advance 
had not been emphasised again and again, as it has been since 
Boyle’s time. He held to a philosophy “that valued knowledge, 
but as it had a tendency to use.” Referring to the error of 
believing in the direct influence of the planets on human life, he 
asks, ““ Why then study them? Why know them only to know 
them?” The magnificent use made by the navigator of those 
heavenly timekeepers was not prophetically revealed to Boyle, 
nor the vast facts in science which the motions and physical states 
of the planets and stars to-day reveal, illustrate, and confirm. 
The fitness of attaching Boyle’s name to our medal resides not 
alone in his universality, but in the fact that he it was who 
chiefly introduced the Scientific Society into our civilization. 
Lastly, he was an Irishman. The Oxford Junior Scientific Club 
has celebrated him by founding Boyle Lectures. To these the 
