50 
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Aeademy. 
XIII. — Address deltveeed befoee the Royal Irish Academy. 
By John H. Jellett, B. D., President. 
[Read November 30, 1870.] 
It is, as you are aware, the custom that once, during his tenure of 
office, the President should lay before you a statement of the condition 
and prospects of the Academy, endeavouring to mark the progress 
which she has made in the several parts of her varied programme, and, 
should there appear in any part of our field of labour a movement 
other than that of progress, directing there your most earnest attention, 
with a view to arrest and remedy the evil. It is a custom not rendered 
in any wise superfluous by the Eeports which, from year to year, are 
presented to you by the Council — valuable, nay, absolutely necessary, 
as these Eeports are. Por the function which they have to discharge is 
different in at least one important respect. The purpose, which the 
Council in its Annual Report seeks to fulfil, is, to note the changes which 
have occurred during the preceding year, in order that immediate 
attention may be given to any part of our system seeming to require 
it. But it is not possible to form an adequate idea of the progress or 
decay of any great institution from observations extending over so 
short a time. The changes there noted may be, to speak mathe- 
matically, changes of short period, phenomena arising from some 
accidental cause, which the succeeding year may arrest or reverse, and 
therefore not affording a true indication of the real progress of the 
institution. Thus, for example, even the number of communications 
read before the Academy, the most significant mark of intellectual 
life, is, when examined and compared for a period so short as a single 
year,J in some respects a fallacious test. If indeed the number of 
such communications in any given year were a truthful measure 
of the intellectual activity of our members during that year, we m ight, 
with a certain amount of probability, infer from it the growth or decay 
of the institution. But this is not so. Intellectual activity we can in 
gen era! command. If an institution like ours be prosperous, intellectual 
activity should be persistent or progressive. But intellectual success, 
that which is really indicated by a communication to the Academy, is 
far more capricious. We cannot command it. We cannot predict it. 
Discovery follows no law which we can ascertain. Intellectual activity 
is its condition ; but within a period so short as a year intellectual 
activity cannot ensure it. The chance is indeed only for the good 
player, yet even for him it is a chance. 
I am addressing those who know how true this is — who have 
learned by bitter experience how the labour of weeks and months may 
pass and leave no sign — how one small fact, the observation of an hour, 
has shown that the path which they followed is barred, forcing them 
to confess that the way of nature was not as they thought it to be, 
forcing them to confess that their toil has gone to that which profited 
