PHILOSOPHY AND SPECIALTIES. 
13 
without interconnection the specialties which had grown 
by natural selection, and inaugurated the excellent plan of 
reading and discussing papers of general importance in gen¬ 
eral meeting. This new departure is in the true scientific 
method. 
Ten years ago the general committee of this Society was 
urged to establish sections in recognition of the specialties 
growing up within its membership as they were growing 
up throughout the scientific world. While I refrain from 
comment upon the controversies on this subject which still 
continue, it is the historic fact that the request was denied 
at the golden moment of projection, and in the Standing- 
Rules of 1881 the judicious amendment for the first time 
appears that “ Sections representing special branches of 
science may be formed by the general committee upon the 
written recommendation of twenty members of the Society.” 
But this was too late for the exceptional advantage of stim¬ 
ulating the several specialties while preserving autonomy, 
economy, and concentration. The Anthropological Society 
had been established February 17, 1879, and the Biological 
Society December 3, 1880. The children had become too 
large and too many for the one room provided by their 
mother and had started independent housekeeping. It may 
be more respectful to compare them with the colonies from 
Athens which sailed off to found the cities of Magna Grecia. 
If that comparison be adopted, the storied ruin of the Violet 
Crown may teach a lesson that the pure Attic stock in the 
polity of science can only be preserved by a system of feder¬ 
ation. 
What might have been accomplished on a large scale by 
prompt action is shown by what actually was done in a 
single instance. The Mathematical Section of the Philo¬ 
sophical Society was instituted March 29, 1883, in accord¬ 
ance with the amendment before mentioned. 
The older members of the Society will appreciate the ad¬ 
vantages attained by the establishment of its Mathematical 
Section. The formulae and demonstrations of its mathema- 
