president's address. 3 



'Science." Let us then enquire, fii'st, why science should be promoted 

 at all, and secondly, whether and how this Institute has been and is 

 promoting it, and how its acti*vity in this matter may and ought to 

 be extended in the future. It should not be necessary, at this 

 advanced date, and in this city, which is fond of boasting of its 

 enlightenment and intellectuality, to defend the claims of science to 

 public sympathy and support, but unfortunately the history of the 

 Institute and its struggles abundantly shows this necessity. Yet 

 nothing is more plain than that science is the greatest promoter of 

 the material well-being, at least, of the human race. Without it no 

 bridges can be built, no public works carried on, do increased facilities 

 for traffic or intercommunication are possible. The musical instru- 

 ment maker cannot dispense with the labours of the adept in the 

 science of sound, which is itself founded on pure mathematical laws ; 

 the public health is directly dependent on the aid of chemistry and 

 biology. 



The application of science to practical I'esults is, of course, impossible 

 without pure science. Pure science is the foundation of applied 

 science ; and if the former be not properly fostered the latter will 

 infallibly languish. 



But pure science, if we except the mathematics, which rest on self- 

 evident truths, is built upon experiment and investigation. Wherever 

 science is cultivated, she has an army of indefatigable investigators 

 in every portion of her wide domain, engaged in laborious and minute 

 researches into the various manifestations and phenomena of nature 

 in her various forms. 



Investigation, however, is not in itself sufficient. Laborious 

 Wagners may go on forever adding to the heap of our knowledge, 

 and may catalogue them and lay them out, as Goethe said of the 

 scientific men of his youth, in different lots and parcels, giving to 

 each a name; the world is but little richer for such knowledge 

 as this. This is but knowledge ; to make it science, the dead 

 bones of the heap must be clothed with living flesh and breathed 

 upon by a life-giving spirit. The investigator, indispensable though 

 his labours be, must be followed by the philosopher. The highest 

 type of the scientific man must have the qualities of the poet, the 

 maker, the creator — the very noblest powers of the intellect. What 

 Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe are in literature, he must be in science. 



