MARQUIS OF RIPON ', ADDRESS. 
227 
to help to store up that wide collection of observations upon which 
alone sound scientific inductions could be based. But however 
important this portion of their work was, it was not their only 
function. Their labours were of a two-fold character. They had 
not only to collect facts and register observations, or even to dis- 
cuss and examine into their bearings, but they had also a direct 
function of education, which was that which as it seemed tc him, 
specially entitled it to be said of this society that it had its appro- 
priate place in our system of education. It was their special function 
to meet young men when they left the Universities, or the higher 
schools, or Mechanics' Institutes, and to help them to carry on in 
after life, under their guidance and with their assistance, the studies 
which they had begun there. It was their business to take these 
young men, from whatever class of life they might have sprung ; 
to test, and to guide, and to encourage them ; to check them where 
they needed to be checked, and where they seemed to be falling 
into error — to check them by the only efficient check in inquiries 
of this description, namely, by free and open discussion, and thus 
to enable them to apply the teachings which they might have re- 
ceived at any of the higher schools or even at the Universities in 
the field of actual experiment, and to carry on throughout life, and 
in the midst of the business engagements of life, not only the cul- 
tivation of their own minds, but the advance also, and progress of 
scientific inquiry in the country. (Applause.) He was strongly 
impressed with the belief that the just fulfilment of such a function 
as this was one of great value, not only locally, but to the nation 
at large. He had not the slightest inclination to institute any kind 
of invidious comparison between the branches of knowledge relating 
to those physical and natural sciences with which the society had 
to do, and to which it was the habit of the day almost to confine — 
erroneously, as he thought — the name of science, and those other 
branches of knowledge — philosophy, history, literature, and the 
like. In the circle of human knowledge — they had each their ap- 
propriate place in the adornment of human life, they had each their 
proper sphere, and they could all be made, if used aright, a fruitful 
