10 Anniversary Address. 



and tlie sincerity of your endeavours to promote tlieir wel- 

 fare ; by inducing implicit reliance in the accuracy of your 

 assertions, and inculcating tlie real value and utility of 

 scientific truth. 



I know that difficulties await any society of this kind in 

 such a course. Even among the educated classes there are 

 many who deride the notion of a Philosophical Institute, and 

 though not ignorant of the derivative sense of the words, nor 

 unwilling to boast themselves " friends of reason/^ or posses- 

 sors of '^ knowledge," would only apply the name of '^ philo- 

 sophers,'^ or ''men of science,^' to its members by way of 

 taunt. That taunt is out of date, and futile. The revelations 

 of the telescope on the one hand, and of the microscope on 

 the other, so far from tending to exalt the pride of human 

 reason, oppress man rather with a sense of utter insigni- 

 ficance. We have no longer, as in Shakspere's day, 



" Oui" philosophical persons to make modern 

 And familiar things supernatural and caiTseless. " 



Such dogmatic half-knowledge, such pretension to superior 

 wisdom, have long since vanished before the more general 

 diffusion of education, and the humility inspired by a wider 

 acquaintance with the boundless realms open to scientific 

 research ; and we find in their stead that our scientific men 

 are anxious and painstaking inquirers after truth, careful 

 recorders of the facts their own special course of study may 

 reveal. 



Another class of doubters as to the utility of the Royal 

 Society's operations will be found in those who style them- 

 selves " par excellence" practical men. 



Very little consideration should serve to show these, how- 

 ever, how enormously they benefit by the progress of scien- 

 tific discovery, how ungratefully they too often appropriate 

 its results with scarcely an acknowledgment. 



