398 Proceedings. 



found another continent." So, also, of the artistic feelings — the love of 

 harmony and the beautiful — they have a real scientific value. The popular 

 collocation of art, science, and literature has more real substantial basis than 

 we might be inclined at first sight to awai'd it. In fact, like the popular 

 instinct for beans and bacon, peas and pork, potatoes and beef, which Liebig 

 shows to have certain real relative nutritive values, so the poi)idar instinct 

 which associates art, science, and literature unconsciously recognizes the fact 

 that these have re-operative influences on each other, and that neither alone 

 can well attain to perfection or develop its entire mental nutritive value 

 without the othei'. 



I therefore desire to remind you that literary or artistic contributions 

 are not foreign to the aims of our society, that, indeed, they would tend 

 to increase the interest in it, and relieve it from the opprobrium of dealing 

 exclusively with whab, to many minds, seem dry, dull things — namely, 

 facts. Thus, I think, contributions relative to the mythology of the native 

 race 3 anecdotes relative to the early settlement of the colony, or of those 

 who took part in that great colonizing work ; reviews of such works as 

 Darwin's " Descent of Man," or his " Emotions," Maudsley on " Mind" and 

 " Body and Mind," Bastian's " Beginnings of Life," Brassey's " Work and 

 Wages"; or of such as Domett's " Ranolf and Amohia," the Earl of Pembroke's 

 "South Sea Bubbles," Trollope's "Australia and New Zealand," or criticisms 

 on the works of our New Zealand artists, suggestions for beautifying our 

 doQiains or for utilizing our natural products, these and many other subjects 

 would, I think, come within the scope of our society's constitution, and impart 

 an interest and popularity to our proceedings. Not that I would court a 

 popularity which would impair, but only that which might enhance our 

 usefulness. For there is a solid value in popularity when allied to usefulness, 

 although by itself it is a worthless element, and, when allied to that which is 

 useless, even a mischievoiis thing. But believing, as I do most sincerely, that 

 we are in this society doing quietly and unassumingly a good work for the 

 community at large, we cannot, I think, too much endeavour to render our 

 work and our objects popular as well as useful. It is one of the characteristics 

 of the science of the present age, that it endeavours to make itself popular — 

 that is, known to, understood by, and liked by, the mass of the people. We 

 find that the profoundest scientific minds think it not beneath them to 

 endeavour — as Tyndall, Huxley, and others do and have done — to educate the 

 minds and enlist the sympathies of the peojjle in and in favour of the gi'eat 

 truths which physical science teaches ; I say the truths which it teaches, for 

 herein lies the grand power of pliysical science — its confidence in truth, its 

 utter hatred of all that is untrvie ; its unwillingness to admit as truth that 

 which is only a probability ; its doubt and distrust of what is only a 



