5 
structure of Justice and Freedom can be built up, and of all the 
factors in human affairs Science is the only one which is universal 
and common to them all; it cannot be altered by language, religion, 
or politics, although it has often been crippled by each. 
As to Australia, her isolaled position from all other continents 
resulted in a unique and slower course of evolution in her flora 
and fauna, and politically she also differs from other continents 
in having practically one race of people, one language, and the 
oceans as her frontiers; she can thus develop her destiny untram- 
melled by the many complex problems and close competition of 
other nations separated, as in Fm rope, by a five-wire fence, a river, 
or a narrow strip of neutral ground. 
Many hold and just experiments in social and industrial 
organisations have originated in Australia, hut the question whether 
the absence of the stimulus of close contact with the ideas and pro- 
gress of oilier countries will he an advantage or otherwise time 
alone will answer. 
in the Great War, science has been used to the utmost extent 
by all the participants, and now with the prospect of Peace, surely 
science will be called upon to assist more than it lias ever been 
before, in the work of reconstruction of national life and industry. 
We cannot go backward, nor can many of the unhappy and un- 
just conditions of living be allowed to continue. If the conditions 
of human affairs be made better as the result of the War, the 
sacrifices involved will not have been in vain. 
T refer to science in its widest sense, as the correlation of 
knowledge, for to know a truth in relation to another truth is to 
know it scientifically. 
It would be impossible in a short address to do more than 
take a hurried glance at the history of scientific thought which 
has attracted mankind from the earliest ages, and realise how 
it has been encouraged and suppressed at various periods of 
history. 
Of all the sciences, astronomy has always appealed to mankind 
and has been studied from the earliest times. From time imme- 
morial the recurring alternation of day and night and the seasons 
have appealed to men’s thoughts, and attempts have been made 
to understand and explain these workings of nature. Phen- 
omena of non-recurring or isolated events, such as thunderstorms 
or earthquakes, have generally in the past, and I fear sometimes 
in the present day, been attributed to what is called the super- 
natural, which T presume meant that there was no explanation 
available. The motions of the Heavenly bodies were observed and 
studied in ancient times by the Chaldeans, Chinese, Arabs, Egyp- 
tians, and Greeks, and it is from the Chaldeans and Arabs that 
many of the names used in astronomy are derived, but it is to 
the Greeks that great advances in astronomy and other sciences 
