Page:Inaugural address, delivered before the members of the Victorian Institute, on Friday the 21st of September, 1854 (IA inauguraladdres00barr).pdf/18

14 yet independent study, has enabled a Le Verrier and an Adams to herald the existence of new worlds undetected by the inquisitive astronomer, and of the patient meditations of other men who have spread out before him unimagined wonders. Methods of treating abstruse topics are simplified; improvements in the instruments to assist philosophical investigation succeed each other to an extent which, while they excite a just admiration, hold out a belief that we are hovering on the threshold of more astounding discoveries than any which have hitherto awed us by their sublimity or gratified us by the practical usefulness which has tended so extensively to the civilisation of mankind.

And is it for us to lag behind in the race in which the sages of our time shew us such an example of diligence and activity? Is it to be said of us, the tenants of a portion of one of the grand divisions of the globe—a storehouse of unrevealed mysteries—the theatre, we may presume, of future great actions—that we have no ambition but to vegetate on its surface, mere "air plants, whose roots are the lungs,(as Novalis quaintly terms men) without even contributing our quota of information respecting those things daily exposed to the observing eye, or endeavouring to awaken an appreciation of their concert, or aspiring to add a sign to the zodiac of science?

Are we to waste life in frivolity, or in occupations which, when we perish, will leave no memorial of even our own existence; and allow our era to be cited as that of the Cimmerian obscurity of the Southern Hemisphere? Are we to shrink from solving our portion of the great problem of truth, or is it apprehended that the grandeur of the theme should repulse us, that we should doubt our powers, distrust our endurance, and he fearful for our success?

Such timorous diffidence, such unworthy distrust is unbecoming, and ought not to be suffered to interpose the fluctuation of a wavering instant; and even were there grounds to apprehend a want of vigour to sustain this Institute, I would say,