204 Canadian Record of Science. 



grapple with those mysterious questions of origins which oc- 

 cupied it in the days of its infancy, and it is to be hoped that 

 it may not, like the Titans of ancient fable, be hurled back 

 from heaven, or like the first mother find the knowledge to 

 which it aspires a bitter thing. In any case we should fully 

 understand the responsibility which we incur when in these 

 times of full-grown science We venture to deal with the great 

 problem of origins, and should be prepared to find that in 

 this field, the new philosophy, like those which have preceded 

 it, may meet with very imperfect success. The agitation of 

 these subjects has already brought science into close rela- 

 tions, sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, it is to be hoped 

 in the end helpful, with those great and awful questions of 

 the ultimate destiny of humanity, and of its relations to its 

 Creator, which must always be nearer to the human heart 

 than any of the achievements of science on its own ground. 

 In entering on such questions, we should proceed with cau- 

 tion and reverence, feeling that we are on holy ground ; and 

 that though, like Moses of old, we may be armed with all the 

 learning of our time, we are in the presence of that which, 

 while it burns, is not consumed ; a mystery which neither 

 observation, experiment, nor induction can ever fully solve. 

 In a recent address, the late President of the Royal Society 

 called attention to the fact that within the lifetime of the 

 older men of science of the present day, the greater part of 

 the vast body of knowledge included in the modern sciences 

 of physics, chemistry, biology, and geology, has been accu- 

 mulated, and the most important advances made in its appli- 

 cation to such common and familiar things as the railway, 

 ocean navigation, the electric telegraph, electric lighting, 

 the telephone, the germ theory of disease, the use of anaes- 

 thetics, the processes of metallurgy, and the dyeing of fabrics. 

 Even since the last meeting in this city, much of this great 

 work has been done, and has led to general results of the 

 most marvellous kind. What at that time could have aj>- 

 peared more chimerical than the opening up, by the enter- 

 prise of one British colony, of a shorter road to the east by 

 way of the extreme west, realizing what was happily called 

 by Milton and Cheadle ' the new North-west Passage,' mak- 



