President's Address. 
65 
gations, and that the Council has always been most liberal in allocating 
money for the illustration of any important papers which have been 
entrusted to us. 
A word, in conclusion, to the two great classes into which here, as 
everywhere, men are divided — the labourer and the looker-on. These 
classes, indeed, necessarily overlap. The earnest labourer in one 
department will probably be a looker-on in many others ; but you will 
readily understand that the distinction is quite real. 
And first I would say a word to the looker-on. 
My brother Academician, you will not, I hope and think, fall 
into the error of supposing that, because in some one or more depart- 
ments you are not a labourer — because, in those departments, the 
active work of Science must be done by other hands than yours, you 
have, therefore, no function to discharge even there. The truth is far 
otherwise. If you cannot assist in that work directly, yet the in- 
direct aid which you can give, sometimes perhaps by criticizing, at 
all times by stimulating and encouraging — by stimulating the in- 
active, or encouraging the despondent — is of the highest practical 
importance. Perhaps, indeed, if human nature were less imperfect 
than it is, the love of truth alone would be motive sufficient without 
any such indirect aid. But we must take human nature as it is. We 
know that this motive is not always sufficient, and we know, too, that 
among the secondary forces which urge on the student, none is more 
powerful than the sympathy of his fellow-man. It is that sympathy 
which I ask you to give — to give, not only to those whose labours 
may be akin to your own, but to all who are striving, each according 
to his several ability, to carry forward the sacred banner of Truth. 
We, gentlemen, members of a society whose pursuits are so various, 
that they might almost seem unconnected, have more especial need of 
this catholic sympathy. Let us try to feel and to show it — the archaeo- 
logist to the man of science ; the man of science to the archseologist — 
driving from our minds all base jealousy of each other — rivals in 
nothing but in devotion to the one great cause, to which, in different 
uniforms, and under different leaders, we are all pledged alike. 
And, still addressing the looker-on, I would say, do not allow your- 
self to be too impatient in expecting results— do not be hasty to con- 
demn the labourer, because no fruit of his toil is at once apparent. 
Eemember how small a fragment of his path is visible to you. You see 
but the successful close. To you it is given to assist at his triumph ; 
but of the path by which he has reached the goal, traversed, not like 
that of the politician, amid noisy congratulations, but in loneliness and 
in silence — of that you know nothing. You know not of the obstacles 
which have crossed that path, or how slow and painful has been their re- 
moval : you know not how often he has paused in his course, longing 
yet dreading to take the next step, lest it should show him an obstacle 
which he cannot remove — a barrier which he cannot cross ; or, worse 
still, lest that step should reveal the object of his pursuit as an 
R. I. A. PROC. — VOL. I.. 8ER. II., 8CIKNCE. K 
