THE PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 119 
yield still stronger proofs that the man of Europe, of Egypt, and of 
India, are alike descended of one primal stock. 
In relation to the psychological aspect of the question, and the 
possible acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation, 
one argument has forcibly impressed my own mind, whatever value it 
may appear to possess to others. In recently carrying out some 
minute investigations into the characteristics of the languages of this 
continent, I have been struck with the confirmation which those of 
the Red Indian nations supply to the well known philological truth, 
that while vocabularies are simple in the early stages of intellectual 
development, and acquire their complex character with the progress 
of the nation: grammar on the contrary appears more full, complete, 
and harmoniously consistent, the further back it is traced. Selecting 
one of the native languages of our western forests, we find among the 
rude children of nature, destitute of all science, and ignorant even of 
letters, no rudimentary combination of half-developed utterances, 
the transitional stage between brute cries and human speech; but a 
language having systematised grammatical forms as rich, regular, and 
consistent, as that in which Plato wrote, and Homer sung. Such 
perfection of organization in languages, devoid of all abstract terms, of 
- the whole vocabulary of mental science, and of generic symbols of 
that classification which accompanies the recognition alike of the laws 
of external nature and of thought, is utterly irreconcileable with those 
ideas of development once more offered for our acceptance on such 
high authority, and of a grand futurity, wherein “all corporeal and 
mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection,’ by the 
natural selection of favoured races in the struggle for life. 
In thus attempting, however inadequately, to review the recent 
progress of knowledge, with a special relation to our own Province, I 
have aimed at recalling to your notice alike those labours in the cause 
of science, during the past year, in which we possess some personal 
interest, and those novel and suggestive theories which have most 
recently given a new impulse to thought. We claim, as associates of 
this Institute to rank as lovers of science, united for the investigation 
of the laws of nature, and the discovery of new truths in every depart- 
ment of human knowledge. We desire also to rank as workers, and 
to associate with us all the workers in the same noble cause. It 
would indeed be a grave reflection on this Province, dowered with the 
inestimable blessings of a fertile soil, a hardy yet genial climate, and 
