ences
which, like young horses, wish each to have its head free with leave to go
its own way, difficulties mechanical and financial, of press and post,
difficulties raised by existing interests--these and yet other
difficulties are obstacles not easy to be overcome. The most striking and
the most encouraging features of the deliberations which have now been
going on for three years have been the repeated expressions, coming not
from this or that quarter only, but from almost all quarters, of an
earnest desire that the effort should succeed, of a sincere belief in the
good of international cooperation, and of a willingness to sink as far as
possible individual interests for the sake of the common cause. In the
face of such a spirit we may surely hope that the many difficulties will
ultimately pass out of sight.

* * * * *

I make no apology for having thus touched on international cooperation. I
should have been wanting had I not done so on the memorable occasion of
this meeting. A hundred years ago two great nations were grappling with
each other in a fierce struggle, which had lasted, with pauses, for many
years, and which was to last for many years to come; war was on every lip
and in almost every heart. To-day this meeting has, by a common wish,
been so arranged that those two nations should, in the persons of their
men of science, draw as near together as they can, with nothing but the
narrow streak of the Channel between them, in order that they may take
counsel together on matters in which they have one interest and a common
hope. May we not look upon this brotherly meeting as one of many signs
that science, though she works in a silent manner and in ways unseen by
many, is steadily making for peace?

Looking back, then, in this last year of the eighteen hundreds, on the
century which is drawing to a close, while we may see in the history of
scientific inquiry much which, telling the man of science of his
shortcomings and his weakness, bids him be humble, we also see much,
perhaps more, which gives him hope. Hope is, indeed, one of the watchwords
of science. In the latter-day writings of some who know not science much
may be read which shows that the writer is losing, or has lost, hope in
the future of mankind. There are not a few of these; their repeated
utterances make a sign of the times. Seeing in matters lying outside
science few marks of progress and many tokens of decline or