September 24, 1900] 



SCIENCE 



389 



attractive personality -nhich endeared him 

 to all who were intimately associated with 

 him. His kindly interest in his students 

 and assistants and his many generous and 

 helpful deeds in their behalf will long be 

 remembered by those who had the good 

 fortune to work with him. 



Thomas B. Osborne 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE AD- 



yAXCEilENT OF SCISyCE' 



ADDRESS OF THE PRESWENT TO THE 



PHYSIOLOGICAL SECTION 



THE PHYSIOLOGICAL BASIS OF SUCCESS 



During past years it has been customary 

 for the presidents of sections in their ad- 

 dresses either to give a summary of recent 

 investigations, in order to show the posi- 

 tion and outlook of the branch of science 

 appertaining to the section, or to utilize 

 the opportunity for a connected account 

 of researches in which they themselves 

 have been engaged, and can therefore 

 speak with the authority of personal ex- 

 perience as well as with that imparted by 

 the presidential chair. The growing 

 wealth of publications with the special 

 function of giving summaries and surveys 

 of the different branches of science, drawn 

 up by men ranking as authorities in the 

 subject of which they treat, renders such 

 an interpretation of the presidential duties 

 increasingly unnecessary, and the various 

 journals which are open to every investi- 

 gator make it difficult for me to give in 

 an address anything which has not already 

 seen the light in other forms. The associa- 

 tion itself, however, has undergone a cor- 

 responding modification. Founded as a 

 medium of communication between work- 

 ers in different parts of the country, it has 

 gradually acquired the not less important 

 significance of a tribunal from which men 

 of science, leaving for a time their labora- 

 tories, can speak to an audience of intelli- 



• Winnipeg, 1909. 



gent laj^men, including under this term 

 all those who are engaged in the work of 

 the world other than the advancement of 

 science. These men would fain know the 

 lessons that science has to teach in the liv- 

 ing of the common life. By standing for 

 a moment on the little pinnacle erected by 

 the physicist, the chemist or the botanist, 

 they can, or should be able to, gain new 

 hints as to the conduct of the affairs of 

 themselves, their town or their state. The 

 enormous advance in the comfort and 

 prosperity of our race during the last cen- 

 tury has been due to the application of 

 science, and this meeting of the as.sociation 

 may be regarded as an annual mission in 

 which an attempt is made to bring the 

 latest results of scientific investigation into 

 the daily routine of the life of the com- 

 munity. 



We physiologists, as men who are lay- 

 ing the foundation on which medical knowl- 

 edge must be built, have as our special 

 preoccupation the study of man. Al- 

 though every animal, and indeed every 

 plant, comes within the sphere of our in- 

 vestigations, our main object is to obtain 

 from such comparative study facts and 

 principles which will enable us to eluci- 

 date the mechanism of man. In this task 

 we view man, not as the psychologist or 

 the historian does, by projecting into our 

 object of study our own feelings and emo- 

 tions, but by regarding him as a machine 

 played upon by environmental events and 

 reacting thereto in a way determined by 

 its chemical and physical structure. 



Can we not learn something of value in 

 our common life by adopting this objective 

 point of view and regarding man as the 

 latest result of a continuous process of 

 evolution which, begun in far-off ages, has 

 formed, proved and rejected myriads of 

 tj-pes before man himself appeared on the 

 surface of the globe 1 



