how essential a knowledge of the principles of the science was to all
who had the industrial progress of the country at heart. The country
was now beginning to see that if she was to maintain her commercial
and industrial supremacy, the education of her people from top to
bottom must be carried out on new lines. The question how this could
be most safely and surely accomplished was one of transcendent
national importance, and the statesman who solved this educational
problem would earn the gratitude of generations yet to come.

In welcoming the unprecedentedly large number of foreign men of
science who had on this occasion honored the British Association by
their presence, he hoped that that meeting might be the commencement
of an international scientific organization, the only means nowadays
existing of establishing that fraternity among nations from which
politics appeared to remove them further and further, by absorbing
human powers and human work, and directing them to purposes of
destruction. It would indeed be well if Great Britain, which had
hitherto taken the lead in so many things that are great and good,
should now direct her attention to the furthering of international
organizations of a scientific nature. A more appropriate occasion than
the present meeting could perhaps hardly be found for the inauguration
of such a movement. But whether this hope were realized or not, they
all united in that one great object, the search after truth for its
own sake, and they all, therefore, might join in re-echoing the words
of Lessing: "The worth of man lies not in the truth which he
possesses, or believes that he possesses, but in the honest endeavor
which he puts forth to secure that truth; for not by the possession of
truth, but by the search after it, are the faculties of man enlarged,
and in this alone consists his ever-growing perfection. Possession
fosters content, indolence, and pride. If God should hold in his right