Page images
PDF
EPUB

On the Art-Treasures Exhibition.

121

general interest, but to give to your collection, by a scientific and historical arrangement, an educational character--thus not losing the opportunity of teaching the mind, as well as gratifying the senses. And manifold are the lessons which it will present to us! If art is the purest expression of the state of mental and religious culture, and of general civilization of any age or people, an historical and chronological review given at one glance, cannot fail to impress us with a just appreciation of the peculiar characteristics of the different periods and countries the works of which are here exhibited to us, and of the influence which they have exercised upon each other.

In comparing these works with those of our own age and country, while we may well be proud of the immense development of knowledge and power of production which we possess, we have reason also for humility in contemplating the refinement of feeling and intensity of thought manifested in the works of the older schools.

[graphic]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

1 se mi bessed is the

But not less so

stown usef in is as in

stances, at the great and actie of the

¤ner Siven head and lead

sici patroce merakings; and when ne se hat he Sovereign has come forward to gve jer untenance and assistance to the work, nat hey feel I a pleasure to co-operate with her and not to leave her without their support-emuating thus, in works of peace, the chivalric spirit which animated their forefathers in the warlike times of aid

You have done well not to aim at a mere accumulation of works of art, and objects of

[graphic]

On the Art-Treasures Exhibition.

121

general interest, but to give to your collection, by a scientific and historical arrangement, an educational character--thus not losing the opportunity of teaching the mind, as well as gratifying the senses. And manifold are the lessons which it will present to us! If art is the purest expression of the state of mental and religious culture, and of general civilization of any age or people, an historical and chronological review given at one glance, cannot fail to impress us with a just appreciation of the peculiar characteristics of the different periods and countries the works of which are here exhibited to us, and of the influence which they have exercised upon each other.

In comparing these works with those of our own age and country, while we may well be proud of the immense development of knowledge and power of production which we possess, we have reason also for humility in contemplating the refinement of feeling and intensity of thought manifested in the works of the older schools.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE MASS.

STATISTICS are declared useless, because they cannot be relied on for the determination of any given cause, and do only establish probabilities where man requires and asks for certainty. This objection is well founded, but it does not affect the science itself, but solely the use which man has in vain tried to make of it, and for which it is not intended. It is the essence of statistical science that it only makes apparent general laws, but these laws are inapplicable to any special case; that, therefore, which is proved to be the law in general is uncertain in the particular. Thus are the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator manifested, showing how the Almighty has established the physical and moral world on unchangeable laws conformable to His eternal nature, while He has allowed to the individual the

The Individual and the Mass.

123

freest and fullest use of his faculties, vindicating at the same time the majesty of His laws by their remaining unaffected by individual self-determination.

PROFESSOR QUÉTÉLET.

I AM almost ashamed to speak such homely truths (of which I feel myself at best to be a very inadequate exponent) to a meeting like this, including men of such eminence in the science, and particularly in the presence of one who was your first President, M. Quétélet, and from whom I had the privilege, now twenty-four years ago, to receive my first instruction in the higher branches of mathematics-one who has so successfully directed his great abilities to the application of the science to those social phenomena, the discovery of the governing laws of which can only be approached by the accumulation and reduction of statistical facts.

« EelmineJätka »