3370 Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh. 



Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh. 



January 7, 1852. — The monthly meeting of this Society was held in the Institu- 

 tion Rooms, York Place, Hugh Miller, Esq., in the chair; when there was a large 

 attendance of members and visitors. 



Mr. Miller, on taking the chair, delivered the following opening Address : — 

 " Gentlemen, — You have done me the honour of electing me, by a unanimous 

 vote, to be one of the Presidents of the Royal Physical Society. I little thought, some 

 two-and-thirty years ago, when, rather in obedience to a native instinct than with any 

 ulterior object, I sought to acquaint myself with geological phenomena, that there 

 awaited me any such honour. For, unaware at the time that there even existed such 

 a science as Geology, or that the field which it opens has its many labourers, some of 

 whom meet with less, and some with more success in their labours, I could not so much 

 as imagine that distinction was to be achieved by studying the forms and structures 

 of the strange organisms which I laid open amid rocks and in quarries, or in inquir- 

 ing into the circumstances in which they had lived and died, or into the causes to 

 which, in ages long gone by, they had owed their entombment in the stone. But it 

 seems to be one of the characteristics of a true science, that it should promise little 

 and perform much ; and that for those who devote themselves to it simply for its own 

 sake, it should reserve a class of favours of a purely exterior character, rarely vouch- 

 safed lo the suitors who make court to it for that dowry of the extrinsic and the ad- 

 ventitious which it occasionally brings. It certainly is one of the characteristics of 

 geologic science, although in a far higher sense than that to which I have adverted, 

 that it promises little and performs much. It contrasts strongly in this respect with 

 those purely mental sciences still properly taught in our higher schools, for they con- 

 stitute the true gymnastics of mind ; but which, like other gymnastics, are to be re- 

 garded, not as actual work, but simply as a preparation for it. The use of the dumb 

 bells opens the chest and strengthens the muscles : but it is left to labour of quite 

 another kind to supply the wants of the present, or to provide for the necessities of the 

 future. And such appears to be the sort of relation borne by the purely mental to the 

 natural sciences. How very different, however, the prospects which they seemed to 

 open to the curious inquirer in the earliest ages of their history, or even in the earlier 

 history of individual minds among ourselves. Mental science must have appeared to 

 many of us, when we first approached it, as a magnificent gateway, giving access to a 

 vast province, in which not only all knowledge regarding the nature of mind was to be 

 acquired, but in which also, through the study of the intellectual faculties, we were to 

 be introduced to the best possible modes of acquiring all other knowledge. But have 

 we not been disappointed in our hopes? — nay, from the doubts and uncertainties con- 

 jured up by the nice dialectics of the science, have we not had eventually to cast our- 

 selves for escape on the simple instincts of our nature? — and ultimately, have we not 

 gained well nigh as little through the process so imperatively demanded by the meta- 

 physician, of turning the mind upon itself, instead of exercising it on things external 

 to it, as if we had been engaged in turning the eye upon itself, instead of directing it 

 on all the objects which it has been specially framed to see — among the rest, on other 

 eyes, and the peculiarities of their structure ? In both natural and physical science, 

 on the contrary, have we not often found, that while the promise has been slight, the 

 fulfilment has been ample, far beyond the reach of anticipation ? When the boy 



