
1904.]| Anniwersary Address by Sir Wilkam Huggins. 11 
On their part, the Fellows of the Royal Society, remembering that the 
promotion of Natural Knowledge is the great object for which it was founded 
and still exists, and that all undertakings in the home and in the State, 
‘since they are concerned with Nature, can be wisely directed and carried on 
with the highest efficiency only as they are based upon a knowledge of 
Nature, have always recognised the fundamental importance of the Society’s 
work to national as well as to individual success and prosperity, and their 
‘own responsibility as the depositories of such knowledge. They have 
always been willing, even at great personal cost, ungrudgingly to afford any 
assistance in their power to the Government on all questions referred to 
itthem which depend upon technical knowledge, or which require the 
employment of scientific methods. In particular the Society has naturally 
always been eager to help forward, and even to initiate, such national 
undertakings as voyages of observation or of discovery of any kind, or for 
tthe investigation of the incidence of disease, which have for their express 
‘object the increase of Natural Knowledge. 
At the same time, as the Society is dependent upon the voluntary help 
of its Fellows, whose time is fully occupied with their own work, the Society 
may reasonably expect the Government not to ask for assistance on any 
matters of mere administration that could be otherwise efficiently provided 
for. The hope may be expressed that in the near future, with increased 
official provision in connection with the recognition of Science, the relation 
of the Society to the Government may not extend beyond that of a purely 
advisory body, so that the heavy responsibilities now resting upon it, in 
respect of the carrying out of many public undertakings on which its advice 
has been asked, may no longer press unduly, as they certainly do at present, 
upon the time and energy of the Officers and Members of Committees. 
The Society regards this outside work, important as it is, as extraneous, and 
therefore as subordinate, and would not be justified in permitting such work 
ito interfere with the strict prosecution of pure natural science as the primary 
purpose of the Society’s existence, upon which, indeed, the Society’s importance 
as an advisory body ultimately depends. 
The array of national undertakings of which the Society has been wholly 
or in part in charge, or to which it has given advice or assistance from time 
to time, is so very great that any attempt to point out, even in broad outline, 
the more important of the directions in which the Society’s influence has 
been actively employed for the public service, must necessarily be fragmentary 
and very incomplete. On this occasion it is not possible to do more than 
to give, in a few sentences, a rapid presentation of a few typical examples of 
the Society’s public work. 
