18 
president’s ADDRESS — SECTION A. 
distinguishes with the eye of an experienced traveller "which of these 
will probably best repay exploration. He follows each in turn, and 
judges by the general look of the country how much time and labour 
to expend on it. He stores in his mind the infinitely varied impres- 
sions gathered from all his excursions, and he uses these to enable 
him to gauge the plausibility of bis guess. According to his general 
impression he acquits or condemns the idea. lie lets it live and go 
forth to fructify, or he strangles it in its birth. Sometimes these 
investigations occupy but a second, sometimes months, sometimes 
years. But, however long they occupy him, they are built into him, 
and become a part of bis future existence. Whether or not he shall 
prove a useful member of humanity depends largely on the rapidity 
with which he disentangles the maze and resolves on a course of action. 
It depends, perhaps, still more largely on the onef hand on his funda- 
mental love of truth ; on the other hand, on his repugnance to accept 
unchallenged what does not tally with his laboriously formed, perhaps 
indistinct, beliefs, and on his recognition that, while all of us are far 
from the absolute truth, each possesses some specially useful instinct 
for the discovery of that truth which lies in a particular direction. Is 
the poet’s method wholly different ? 
But the poet’s heart, you say, .beats in unison with all mankind, 
and his deeds are the heritage of the race. Granted, hut let it not be 
supposed that this is untrue of the mathematician. Certainly his 
specialised work is generally not best accompli shed in a convivial 
meeting. But liis work is not for himself. Cavendish, who made 
scientific discoveries of the first rank and buried them, is a standing 
wonder to all of us. His mental constitution seems so incongruous that 
we have the feeling that it would be vastly more comfortable to believe 
that we are all under a huge mistake, and that no such man ever 
existed. But if this is the feeling that is universally held with regard 
to Cavendish by those who have heard of him, how is it that the 
popular notion seems to be that every mathematician is naturally of 
his type ? Not one in a thousand of the workers in our field would 
continue his work for a day if he thought that no other human being 
would ever he influenced by it. No, his belief is that his work, how- 
ever bumble, is at least a small improvement in the road that leads 
humanity ever higher. AVhat inspires his labours is the belief that if 
not to-day then io -morrow, or a hundred years hence, perhaps, one 
fellow-workman hidden from him in the darkness will he led to view 
things somewhat iu his own light. And he believes that this one’s 
thoughts and, indeed, actions will be thereby coloured in somewhat 
the same way as his own. He thinks that he is scattering the seed of 
a plant that is useful to man, and he trusts that it will spring up in 
places unknown to him perchance, but will benefit somebody. He 
thinks that others will find where Ids work is imperfect, and will 
render it useful by lopping off harmful excrescences. Sometimes, 
of course, he is so far mistaken as to suppose some worthless work 
useful, but he strives ever to train himself to be more clear-sighted. 
And in a wider sense than just mentioned the mathematician’s 
work is not for himself. It is not merely for other mathematicians. 
He provides means for all to have wider conceptions of the universe 
than would be possible without his aid. AVbo can deny that the 
w r orld in wduch w r e live and think is a thousand times more spacious 
