66 SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY NOTES. 
Viscount Milton, and the Rev: W. Vernon Harcourt eloquently set forth the plan 
for the formation of a British Association for the promotion of Science, which he 
showed to have become a want for his country, the most ardent supporter of this 
resolution could not have anticipated that it would start into life full-grown as it 
were, enter at once upon its career of usefulness, and pursue it without deviation 
from the original design, triumphing over the oppositions which he had to encoun- 
ter in common with everything that is new andclaims to be useful. Gentlemen, 
this proved that the want wasareal, and not an imaginary one, and that the 
mode in which it was intended to supply that want was based upon a just appre- 
ciation of unalterable truths. Mr. Vernon Harcourt summed up the desiderata 
in graphie words, which have almost identically been retained as the exposition of 
the objects of the Society, printed at the head of the aunually-appearing volume of 
its Transactions:—‘‘ to give a stronger impulse and more systematic direction to 
scientific inquiry—to promote the intercourse of those who cultivate Science in 
different parts of the Empire, with one another and with foreign Philosophers—and 
to obtain a more general attention to the objects of Science, and a removal of any 
disadvantages of a public kind which impede its progres.” 
To define the nature of Science, to give an exact and complete definition of what 
that Science, to whose service the Association is devoted, is and means, has as it 
naturally must, at all times occupied the Metaphysician. He has answered the 
question in various ways, more or less satisfactorily to himself or others. To me, 
Science, in its most general and comprehensive acceptation, means the knowledge 
of what I know, the consciousness of human knowledge. Hence, to know, is the 
object of all Science; and all special knowledge, if brought to our consciousness 
in its separate distinctiveness from, and yet in its recognised relation to the totality 
of our knowledge, is scientific knowledge. We require, then, for Science—that 
is to say, for the acquisition of scientifie knowledge—those two activities of our 
mind which are necessary for the acquisition of any knowledge—analysis and 
synthesis; the first, to dissect and reduce into its component parts the objects to be 
investigated, and to render an accurate account to ourselves of the nature and 
qualities of these parts by observation ; the second to recompose the observed and 
understood parts into a unity in our consciousness, exactly answering to the object 
of our investigation, The labours of the man of Science are therefore at once the 
most humble and the loftiest which man can undertake. He only does what every 
little child does from its first awakening into life, and must do every moment of 
its existence ; and yet he aims at the gradual approximation to divine truth itself 
If then, there exists no difference between the work of the man of Science and that 
of the merest child, what constitutes the distinction? Merely the conscious self- 
determination. The child observes what accident brings before it, and uncon- 
sciously forms its notion of it; the so-called practical man observes what his 
special work forces upon him, and he forms his notions upon it with reference to 
this peculiar work. The man of Science observes what he intends to observe, and 
knows why he intends it. The value which the peculiar object has in his eyes is 
not determined by accident, nor by an external cause, such as the mere connexion 
with work to be performed, but by the place which he knows this object to hold 
in the general universe of knowledge, by the relation which it bears to other parts 
of that general knowledge. 
