784 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
hesitation, the man who impresses his employers with a 
notion that he is acquainted with the work which he at¬ 
tempts to perform. This practical man may sometimes be 
brought face to face, with more than usual difficulties; there 
may be an outbreak of some new disease, some startling 
circumstances that place him in an altogether unaccustomed 
position. Well, he deals with these circumstances, and he 
deals with them satisfactorily. He reasons from the causes 
to the effects, and he ascertains by the process of logical 
deduction how this is dependent upon that. But, gentlemen, 
recollect that, in so far as he does this, so soon as he steps 
out of the mere function of doing and commences the act of 
thinking, so soon does he become the philosopher, and ceases 
to be merely the practical man. 
The confusion which has arisen is almost hopeless, but its 
existence is nevertheless quite undoubted. What you com¬ 
monly call the man of great experience and the man of prac¬ 
tice is after all the most scientific man. I could not in this 
presence tell you what the world means by a “ practical 55 man 
because I should offend your sensibilities. The practical men, 
people would delineate for you, are not the “ practical ” men 
which you would desire to be. Nor, on the other hand, is the 
“scientific” man precisely the scientific man of your com¬ 
prehension. He is not merely the student, the bookworm, 
the philosopher who is content to sit calmly by, searching 
for the knowledge which is to him nearly valueless, and 
disregarding the work which is given to him to do; this is not 
what you mean, it is not what I mean by the scientific man. 
What we really mean by the man of science is the man 
who has devoted his time to the acquisition of a profound 
knowledge of his profession, the man who is competent to 
reason out every subject definitely from cause to effect; the 
man who never meets with a difficulty without being able 
satisfactorily to overcome it, and the man who if he does not 
devote an exclusive attention to the mere manual work of 
his profession does not do so because he apprehends that the 
philosophic and scientific part of it is infinitely the more 
important of the two. 
If I contend, gentlemen, this morning, for the necessity of a 
deep devotion to the study of science, I do not wish to be 
thought to underrate the importance of practical experience : 
but I desire to impress upon you this one important fact, that 
the practical skill will inevitably be acquired in the course of 
time. However awkward some of you may be from sheer want 
of opportunity to do, it is quite certain that in time to come 
you will acquire all the dexterity which you could desire. But 
