INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
615 
them only as a thing which is. By this remark I am forcibly 
reminded of the eloquent address which has just been de¬ 
livered at the meeting of the “ British Association,” by 
his Royal Highness the Prince Consort. Speaking of science, 
the Prince observes: 
“ To me science, in its most general and comprehensive 
acceptation, means the knowledge of what I know, the con¬ 
sciousness of human knowledge. Hence to know is the 
object of all science; and all special knowledge, if brought 
to our consciousness in its separate distinctiveness from, and 
yet in its recognised relation to the totality of our knowledge, 
is scientific knowledge. We require, then, for science—that 
is to say, for the acquisition of scientific knowledge—those 
two activities of our mind which are necessary for the acqui¬ 
sition of any knowledge—analysis and synthesis ; the first, 
to dissect and reduce into its component parts the object to 
be investigated, and to render an accurate account to our¬ 
selves of the nature and qualities of these parts by observa¬ 
tion ; the second, to recompose the observed and understood 
parts into a unity in our consciousness, exactly answering to 
the object of our investigation. The labours of the man of 
science are, therefore, at once the most humble and the loftiest 
which man can undertake. He only does what every little 
child does from its first awakening into life, and must do 
every moment of its existence ; and yet he aims at the gradual 
approximation to Divine truth itself. If, then, there exists 
no difference between the work of the man of science and 
that of the merest child, what constitutes the distinction ? 
Merely the conscious self-determination. The child observes 
what accident brings before it, and unconsciously forms its 
notion of it; the so-called practical man observes what his 
special work forces upon him, and he forms his notions upon 
it with reference to this particular work. The man of science 
observes what he intends to observe, and knows why he 
intends it. The value which the peculiar object has in his 
eyes is not determined by accident, nor by an external cause, 
such as the mere connexion with work to be performed, but 
by the place which he knows this object to hold in the general 
universe of knowledge by the relation which it bears to other 
parts of that general knowledge. To arrange and classify 
that universe of knowledge becomes, therefore, the first, and 
perhaps the most important, object and duty of science. 
It is only when brought into a system, by separating the in¬ 
congruous, and combining those elements in which we have 
been enabled to discover the internal connexion which the 
Almighty has implanted in them, that we can hope to grapple 
