THIRD ORDINARY MEETING. 33 



satisfied deliverances has done much to bring science into disrepute. 

 It cannot be too strongly urged that no man can teach what he does 

 not know. Self evident as the proposition seems, experience con- 

 stantly shews that it is in danger of being ignored. 



"With some again popular science is another name for scientific 

 fooling. They seem to think that the popular stomach is unable to 

 digest anything but froth. " Strong meat is for men and milk for 

 babes," but these people feed their scientific infants not on good 

 wholesome milk, but on sugar plums and curry powder. Their 

 children cry for bread and they give them a Pharoah's Serpent ! 



None the less, however, is it a matter of the highest moment that 

 sound scientific instruction should be given to the public, that the 

 truths laid hold of by the few should be made known to the many, 

 that science should be no esoteric possession of the favoured few, 

 but should become the heritage of the world. 



The vastness of the practical benefits which the application of 

 scientific discoveries and scientific principles to practical life has 

 brought in the past, and is likely to bring in the future, is one most 

 cogent reason for the more general dissemination of these discoveries 

 and principles. 



If we try to picture to ourselves the condition of society at the 

 end of the 17th century, when Savery exhibited before the Royal 

 Society a model of his engine for Raising Water by Fire, and com- 

 pare it with that with which we are now familiar, when the great 

 agents of Heat, Light and Electricity have been brought by the aid 

 of science into such wonderful subjection to the wants of mankind ; 

 and if we try to pierce with prophetic vision into the mists of the 

 future, and speculate upon the gigantic possibilities which the light 

 of science, brightening every hour, seems to render visible before us, 

 we may well be impressed with the necessity of disseminating a know- 

 ledge of science as a means of benefiting the human race. 



But besides the practical advantage to be derived from the spread 

 of scientific information, it has a highly important reflex action upon 

 the scientific investigator. 



Man will not work without a motive, and the applause of a dis- 

 criminating public is one very strong incentive to exertion in science 

 as in every other field of labour. It is true that some men love 

 knowledge for its own sake, and that the most successful workers 

 are likely to be those who are enamoured of their labour. But for 

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