PHILOSOPHY AND SPECIALTIES. 
BY 
Garrick Mallery. 
ADDRESS AS RETIRING PRESIDENT. 
Delivered December 8, 1888. 
The time is past when one knight-errant could overcome 
every antagonist at a tournament of all arms. This was 
done in intellectual panoply when the chief seats of learning 
could be successfully challenged to a dispute on any subject 
and all subjects, or as the pretension was derisively para¬ 
phrased, de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis.” It was 
actually done so late as the last quarter of the sixteenth 
century, when a locally unknown youth posted a notice on 
the gates of the University of Paris requesting “ all learned 
persons to meet him in public disputation, when he would 
be ready to answer to what should be propounded to him 
concerning any science, liberal art, discipline, or faculty, 
practical or theoretical.” After a disputation of nine hours 
with the most eminent doctors, the foreign stripling was by 
sound of trumpet declared victor, and presented with prizes 
of diamonds and gold by the Rector of the great Sorbonne 
which resounded with wild cheers from the students of the 
Nations. More graceful applause by jewelled nobles of the 
third Henry’s splendid court followed, and the bright glances 
of Beauty’s flying squadron, commanded by the Medicean 
Queen-Mother, were doubtless more esteemed by the cadet of 
Scotland than all his other tributes. 
In the days of the Admirable Crichton it was possible for 
one mind to acquire and hold the total of existing knowl- 
BulJ, Phil. Soc., Wash., Vol. XI, 1889. 
