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Unquestionably a large amount of the influence which is here 
traceable is due to publication rather than to personal contact. And 
this fact brings before us one of the most valuable elements of our 
union. The writings of deep and original thinkers in any science 
are not likely to be self-supporting. If successful, their success 
must be slow. It is only a reputation of the highest order that can 
ensure the sale of heavy thought. Youthful discoverers have no 
chance of success. In some departments of knowledge, so crushing 
is this expense of publication, as even to destroy societies. The Me- 
moirs of the Analytical Society, containing papers by the greatest 
mathematicians of Britain, reached but one volume, of which, pro- 
bably, not half a dozen copies were ever sold. “ The Mathematician,” 
and the “ Cambridge and Dublin Journal,” have ceased to exist. The 
advantage of a large society like this is, that it constitutes both the 
publisher and the public. Thus papers uninteresting to the mass, 
perhaps even uninteresting to all at the time of their publication, are 
handed down to future thinkers, where, in a newly turned up soil, they 
may grow and produce rich fruit. The work of publication is perhaps 
our greatest work, — perhaps our properest work. The torch of truth 
is hereby trimmed and passed on from age to age. The great English 
philosopher describes man as the interpreter of nature. But this is 
not his characteristic designation ; for are not the beasts, are not the 
birds, are not the very insects, interpreters of nature ? It is as the 
interpreter of man — the interpreter of man’s records — that man 
stands distinguished. Thus reason transcends instinct that its 
gifts are transmissive and cumulative. Mind does not stand sup- 
ported by the mind which exists around it, — not simply, not mainly, — • 
there is a higher and a broader support. The minds of the great of 
by-gone ages live and work in the breasts of their successors. The 
old Greeks, I suppose, knew this, and embodied it in the fable of 
Athene, the goddess of knowledge, who sprang into existence, not 
as a naked, helpless child, but as a grown-up being, clad incomplete 
armour, from the head of Zeus. 
Hence the importance of publication. It is at once the food of 
existing thought and the seed of future knowledge. A society such 
as ours has some little difficulty, it may be, in rendering its two 
functions of personal influence and of publication harmonious. 
Personal intercourse may operate injuriously on publication. It may 
reasonably be expected to swell our Transactions with unimportant 
