THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 169 
Europe, and indeed most districts which have ever yielded a 
literary language of any pretension, have had greater or less atten- 
tion paid to their treasures. The general result goes far to illustrate 
“one of the most remarkable characteristics of our time—the com- 
pleteness with which every form of human development past and 
present is being brought within our view, and is influencing our 
thought.” This impulse is in one respect of the same character as 
that which is daily uniting more closely in mutual intercourse and 
interest all nations on the face of the earth. Whereas, within a 
short space of time, nations like the Chinese, or those of Central 
Asia, were regarded as living a separate life, with which we felt 
merely a commercial or some very inferior interest, we are now aware 
that they all have their place and their influence in THE ONE GREAT 
HUMAN FAMILY. We feel a similar interest in the past, and research 
is daily revealing to us how largely (to use a new term due to these 
enquiries) our thoughts and speculations and habits are mere 
survivals of the past civilizations of men. Interesting discussions 
on many points of Biblical and Archzeologic value have been held 
by scholars of highest eminence—in the sections whose very names 
are suggestive—the Shemitic, Turanian, Dravidian, and Humitic ; 
but the section, which naturally enough proved the most popular, 
was THE ARyAN, or Indo-Germanic. Over this presided one of 
our great Sanscrit scholars. His inaugural address is a complete 
essay on the general relations of the Sanscrit Language and Litera- 
ture to the civilization of our Western Races. Few discoveries have 
ever caused more astonishment than that which our own scholars 
first—Sir W. Jones, Colebrook, Wilson,—and then the Continental 
savans of Germany and France, made, that the despised Hindus 
were in possession of a literature more ancient, more copious, and 
more diversified than the classic literatures themselves of Greece 
and Rome, and that their sacred books yielded in antiquity to the 
Bible only. Philosophie speculation too had pursued an identical 
course by the Himalayas and on the shores of the Mediterranean— 
that even the Greek philosophers had been anticipated by Hindu 
sages; and the very doctrines of atoms and elements had been 
elaborated on the banks of the Ganges. I have done my humble 
share, in this Institution, on former occasions towards describing 
the linguistic specialities of Sanscrit, and in displaying some of the 
beauties of zfs sacred, moral, and drumatic literature. In those 
particulars I cannot repeat myself now; but I will conclude this 
