Anniversary Meeting. 



[Nov. 30, 



when no man could travel faster than horses could transport him, 

 when our means of locomotion were no better than those of Achilles 

 or of Ramses Maimun, lies within my memory.. The electric tele- 

 graph, as a thing for practical nse, is far my junior. So are arms 

 of precision, unless the old rifle be regarded as such. Again, the 

 application to hygiene and to the medical and surgical treatment of 

 men and animals, of our knowledge of the phenomena of parasitism, 

 and the very discovery of the true order of these phenomena, is a 

 long way within the compass of my personal knowledge. 



It is unnecessary for me to enumerate more than these four of the 

 many rich gifts made by science to mankind during the last -sixty 

 years. Arresting the survey here, I would ask if there is any corre- 

 sponding period in previous history which can take credit for«o many 

 momentous applications of scientific knowledge -to the wants ; of 

 mankind ? Depredators of the value of natural knowledge are wont 

 to speak somewhat scornfully of these and such-like benefactions as 

 mere additions to material welfare. I must own to the weakness of 

 believing that material welfare is highly desirable in itself, and I 

 have yet to meet with the man who prefers material illfare. But 

 even if this should be r as some may say, painful evidence of the 

 materialistic tendencies incidental to scientific pursuits, it is surely 

 possible, without much ingenuity, or any prejudice in favour of one 

 or other view of the mutual relations of material and spiritual 

 phenomena, to show that each of these four applications of science 

 has exerted a prodigious influence on the moral, social, and political 

 relations of mankind, and that -such influence can only increase as 

 time goes on. 



If the senseless antipathies, born of isolation, which formerly 

 converted neighbours, whether they belonged to adjacent families 

 or to adjacent nations-, into natural enemies, are dying away, im- 

 proved means of communication deserve the chief credit of the change; 

 if war becomes less frequent, it will be chiefly because its horrors are 

 being intensified beyond bearing by the close interdependence and 

 community of interest thus established between nations, no less than 

 by the improvement of the means of destruction by scientific inven- 

 tion. Arms of precision have taken the mastery of the world out 

 of the hands of brute force, and given it into those of industry and 

 intelligence. If railways and electric telegraphs have rendered ifc 

 unnecessary that modern empires should fall to pieces by their own 

 weight as ancient empires did, arms of precision have provided against 

 the possibility of their being swept away by barbarous invasions. 

 Health means not merely wealth, not merely bodily welfare, but 

 intellectual and moral soundness ; and I doubt if, since the time of 

 the father of medicine, any discovery has contributed so much to the 

 promotion of health and the cure of disease as that of the part played 



