Pressor Hamilton's Address. 



423 



themselves as new members to this mighty body, there are some, and 

 even many, who have reflected little as yet upon its characteristic and 

 essential properties, and who have but little knowledge of what it has 

 been, and what it is, and what it may be expected to become. First, 

 then, the object of the Association is contained in its title ; it is the ad- 

 vancement of science. Our object is not literature, though we have made 

 literary associates, and though we hail and love as brethren those who 

 are engaged in expressly literary pursuits, and who are either themselves 

 the living ornaments of our land's language, or else make known to us 

 the literary treasures of other languages, and lands, and times. Our ob- 

 ject is not religion in any special sense, though respect for religious things 

 and religious men has always marked these meetings, and though we 

 are all bound together by that great tie of brotherhood, which unites 

 the whole human family as children of one father, who is in heaven ; — 

 still less is our object politics, though we are not mere citizens of the 

 world, but are essentially a British Association of fellow-subjects and 

 of fellow-countrymen, who give, however, glad and cordial welcome to 

 those our visitors who come to us from foreign countries, and thankfully 

 accept their aid to accomplish our common purpose — that common pur- 

 pose, that object for which Englishmen, and Scotchmen, and Irishmen 

 have banded themselves together in this colossal Association, to which 

 the eyes of the whole world have not disdained to turn, and to see which, 

 and to raise it higher still, illustrious men from foreign lands have come, 

 is Science : the acceleration of scientific discoveries, and the diffusion of 

 scientific influences. And if it be inquired, how is this aim to be accom- 

 plished, and through what means, and by what instruments and process 

 we as a body hope to forward science, the answer briefly is, that this 

 great thing is to be done by us through the agency of the social spirit, 

 and through the means, and instruments, and process which are contained 

 in the operation of that spirit. — We meet, we speak, we feel together now, 

 that we may afterwards the better think, and act, and feel alone. The 

 excitement with which this air is filled, will not pass at once away ; the 

 influences that are now among us, will not (we trust) be transient, but 

 abiding ; those influences will be with us long, let us hope that they will 

 never leave us ; they will cheer, they will animate us still, when this 

 brilliant w T eek is over ; they will go with us to our separate abodes, will 

 attend us on our separate journeys ; and whether the mathematician's 

 study, or the astronomer's observatory, or the chemist's laboratory, or 

 some rich distant meadow unexplored as yet by botanist, or some un- 

 trodden mountain top, or any of the other haunts and homes and oracu- 

 lar places of science, be our allotted place of labour till we meet together 

 again, 1 am persuaded that those influences will operate upon us all, that 

 we shall all remember this our present meeting, and look forward with 

 joyful expectation to our next reassembling, and by the recollection, and 

 by the hope, be stimulated and supported. It is true, that it is the indi- 

 vidual man who thinks and who discovers, not any aggregate or mass of 

 men. Each mathematician for himself, and not any one for any other, 

 nor even all for one, must tread that more than royal road which leads to 

 the palace and sanctuary of mathematical truth. Each for himself, in his 

 own personal being, must awaken and call forth to mental view the ori- 

 ginal intuitions of time and space ; must meditate himself on those eter- 

 nal forms, and follow for himself that linked chain of thought, which 

 leads, from principles inherent in the child and in the peasant, from the 

 simplest notions and marks of temporal and local site, from the questions 

 when and where, to results so varied, so remote, and seemingly so inac- 

 cessible, that the mathematical intellect of full grown and fully cultivated 

 man cannot reach and pass them without wonder, and something of awe. 

 Astronomers, again, if they would be more than mere artizans, must be 



