Frreuson—Address delivered before the Academy. 187 
eminence, security, and permanence, without which an Academic 
spirit can no more subsist than military virtue in a concourse of 
undisciplined men. 
Outside the province of Demonstiative Science—for I do not 
intrude at all on the Moral Sciences resting on Authority—lies a 
vast and continually widening field of scientific speculation, con- 
cerning itself with the more complex elements of the human mind 
and affections; which, though equally open to our cultivation, the 
Academy has but rarely, and to a cautious extent, entered upon; for, 
once the line of demonstration from mathematical or tangible tests is 
passed, although the formal apparatus of Science may be present, 
certainty begins to merge in probability, in analogy, and opinion. It 
seems, indeed, to be one of the conditions of human knowledge, where 
it does not rest on Authority, that, in proportion as its subjects 
become more intimate to man, their scientific treatment becomes less 
certain. Philosophical inquiry into the higher functions of our 
nature, and the moral and social crystallizations to which they give 
rise, may proceed by ostensibly scientific methods of definition and 
axiom ; but, seeing that we can take out of a definition no more than 
we put into it, the results must still depend on the inquirer’s own 
breadth of view and accuracy of generalization ; and, considering the 
many circumstances which may modify these, it seems to me that the 
Academy has acted wisely in leaving that class of subjects to the 
Chairs and Servnia of Learning elsewhere. It is precisely at this 
point, however, that what I have ventured to present as an ascending 
series, rising higher from its base, and becoming less distinct as it 
rises, appears to some great minds—of which it becomes me to speak 
with the utmost respect—to be but the circle of knowledge returning 
on itself, and amenable to a physical scientific cognizance all round. 
In the absence of Authority, I can only say, for my own part, that at 
one end I see Intuitive Certainty, and at the other Inference and 
Argument ; and confess my inability to understand how the cirele can 
ever be completed by welding the hot and cold metal of these 
extremes together. 
In the wide field I have referred to, in which Science may be said 
to prosecute the search after Truth, with Opinion for its yokefellow, 
my subject leads me to particularize one speculative inquiry—not the 
least interesting or delightful of its class—the theory, namely, of 
Beauty in the Fine Arts. This until lately was a special province of 
our old, honoured Sister Institution, the Royal Dublin Society. Now 
that Science, as conducing especially to Art and Manufacture, has 
been taken up as a branch of the Public Service, it is commonly 
supposed that the great Government Department charged with public 
instruction in these important affairs of life necessarily supplants the 
Society in this function. But those who take this view overlook the 
distinction that the South Kensington Establishment is altogether a 
teaching Institution; whereas the Royal Dublin Society, like this 
Academy, is, although in a more utilitarian sense, an Investigating 
