Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 4.djvu/29

Rh which this decision has been founded to the more detailed reports of the Council, which will he read to you by your Secretary Dr. Roget; hut Igladly avail myself of this opportunity of expressing my respect for the great talents and varied attainments of the distinguished philosopher upon whom this mark of honour has been conferred. If I regard him as occupied with the highest and most important practical duties connected with our system of academical education, and in providing and arranging the materials by which it is conducted, or the principles upon which it should be based, he will he found in the foremost rank of those whose labours do not deserve the less honour because they commonly absorb the entire time and attention of those who are engaged in them, and thus close up the avenue to those distinctions which are almost exclusively conﬁned to great diScoveries in science, or to important productions in literature. When I read his essays on the architecture of the middle agﬁ, on subjects of general literature, or on moral and metaphysical philosophy, exhibiting powers of mind so various in their application and so reﬁned and cultivated in their character, I feel inclined to forget the profound historian of science in the accomplished man of letters, or the learned amateur of art; but it is in his last and highest vocation, whilst tracing the causes which have advanced or checked the progress of the inductive sciences from the ﬁrst dawn of philosophy in Greece to their mature development in the nineteenth century, or in pointing out the marks of design of an all~wise and all-powerful Providence in the greatest of those works and operations of nature which our senses or our knowledge can comprehend or explain, that I recognise the productions of one of those superior minds which are accustomed to exercise a powarful and lasting inﬂuence upon the intellectual character and speculations of the age in which they ﬂourish.

It is now three years since the Royal Medal was adjudged to Mr. Lubbock for his Researches on the Tides; and the Council have availed themselves of the ﬁrst opportunity which was presented by the recurrence of the cycle of the subjects, which are successively entitled to the Royal Medals, to make a similar award to his colleague and fellow-labourer in this very interesting and important series of investigations It is not for me to attempt to balance the relative claims and merits, in connection with this subject, of these two very eminent philosophers; it is quite sufﬁcient to remark that the ﬁrst who ventured to approach this difﬁcult and long-neglected inquiry was the ﬁrst also who was selected for honour: but I have long noticed with equal pride and satisfaction the perfect harmony with which they have carried on their co-ordinate labours, apparently indifferent to every object but the attainment of truth, and altogether superior to those jealousies which too frequently present themselves amongst rival and cotemporaneous labourers in the same departments of science. .

I regret to observe that the second Royal Medal for the present year has not been awarded, and that it has Consequently lapsed to the Executors of his late Majesty. It was proposed that it should be