MAN AND THE UNIVERSE.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16520, 12 May 1919, Page 8

MAN AND THE UNIVERSE.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE PRESS." Sir,—May I ask you to allow me space for a word of appreciation of Dt. Coleridge Farr's presidential address to the members of the Philosophical Institute on Wednesday evening last? His method of treatment was well adapted to interest a general audience, for he dealt with fundamentals, and used detail and metaphor in a masterly manner, but in strict subordination to the purposo he had in view, which was to give a clear idea of the progress made in physical science daring the latter part of the nineteenth and the present century, and this he did without overloading his treatment with detail and formuke, which, though proper and necossary in a text book, would have been quite out of place in a discourse of an hour or so's duration. I trust the public will have the opportunity of seeing it in print. The difficulties that are met with in wresting her secrets from Nature are such as to discourage all but the most resolute souls, and even these, in view of the many false steps taken, and the constant necessity for revising hypotheses in the light of newly-ascertain-ed facts, may wfell feel that they can only proceed with chastened heart and faltering foot, and yet I think the wonder is that in the. evolution of the world there has resulted such a being as man, with the capacity not only to "look before and after," but with an intellectual vision that embraces, on the one hand the infinite depths of space, and, on the other, the infinitely minute atomic elements, or, rather, the positive and negative electrons of wnich they are themselves composed, for in view of his intellectual supremacy we may truly say that:—

Ev*n as a God is' man! His large designs Are Godlike in their grandeur end their range. The whole wide world is but his park and grange. And unseen stars are in his far flung lines. Mo mortal bar his soaring soul confines; No mystery daunts; no problem, dark or strange, Taxing his powers, can make his purpose change. Till he be victor, he for victory pines I

Nor finest forces can his grasp elude; E'en that which drives the comet's lights afar Tields to the power with which he is

endued. Oh whence that power which makes Tii'm as

a God, And gives him realms no mortal foot hath trod? An awesome voice replied "I made both man and star." —Yours, etc., H.A.