1885.] 



President's Address. 



295 



or private, in which scientific instruction was represented by much 

 more than the occasional visit of a vagrant orrery. 



At the present moment, any one who desires to obtain a thorough 

 scientific training has a choice among a dozen institutions ; and 

 elementary scientific instruction is, so to speak, brought to the doors of 

 the poorer classes. If the rich are debarred from like advantages it is 

 their own affair ; but even the most careful public school education 

 does not now wholly exclude the knowledge that there is such a thing 

 as science from the mind of a young English gentleman. If science 

 is not allowed a fair share of the children's bread, it is at any rate 

 permitted to pick up the crumbs which fall from the time-table, and 

 that is a great deal more than I once hoped to see in my lifetime. 



I have followed precedent in leading you to the point at which it 

 might be fair, as it certainly would be customary, to end by congratu- 

 lating you, as Fellows of the Royal Society, on the past progress and 

 the future prospects of the work which, for two centuries, it has been 

 the aim of the Society to forward. But it will perhaps be more 

 profitable to consider that which remains to be done for the advance- 

 ment of science, than to " rest and be thankful " in the contemplation 

 of that which has been done. 



In all human affairs the irony of fate plays a part, and in the midst 

 of our greatest satisfactions, " surgit aniari aliquid." I should have 

 been disposed to account for the particular drop of bitterness to which 

 I am about to refer, by the sexagenarian state of mind, were it not that 

 I find the same complaint in the mouths of the young and vigorous. 

 Of late years, it has struck me, with constantly increasing force, that 

 those who have toiled for the advancement of science are in a fair 

 way of being overwhelmed by the realisation of their wishes. We 

 are in the case of Tarpeia, who opened the gates of the Roman citadel 

 to the Sabines, and was crushed under the weight of the reward 

 bestowed upon her. It has become impossible for any man to keep 

 pace with the progress of the whole of any important branch of science. 

 If he were to attempt to do so his mental faculties would be crushed 

 by the multitude of journals and of voluminous monographs which a 

 too fertile press casts upon him. This was not the case in my young 

 days. A diligent reader might then keep fairly informed of all that 

 was going on, without robbing himself of leisure for original work, 

 and without demoralising his faculties by the accumulation of unas- 

 similated information. It looks as if the scientific, like other revolu- 

 tions, meant to devour its own children ; as if the growth of science 

 tended to overwhelm its votaries ; as if the man of science of the 

 future were condemned to diminish into a narrower and narrower 

 specialist, as time goes on. 



I am happy to say that I do not think any such catastrophe a 



