lems of life to the
best of my ability, in the conviction which has grown with my growth
and strengthened with my strength, that there is no alleviation for the
sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the
resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe
by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off.

It is with this intent that I have subordinated any reasonable, or
unreasonable, ambition for scientific fame which I may have permitted
myself to entertain to other ends; to the popularization of science; to
the development and organisation of scientific education; to the
endless series of battles and skirmishes over evolution; and to untiring
opposition to that ecclesiastical spirit,[17] that clericalism, which in
England, as everywhere else, and to whatever denomination it may belong,
is the deadly enemy of science.

In striving for the attainment of these objects, I have been but one
among many, and I shall be well content to be remembered, or even not
remembered, as such. Circumstances, among which I am proud to reckon the
devoted kindness of many friends, have led to my occupation of various
prominent positions, among which the Presidency of the Royal Society is
the highest. It would be mock modesty on my part, with these and other
scientific honours which have been bestowed upon me, to pretend that I
have not succeeded in the career which I have followed, rather because
I was driven into it than of my own free will; but I am afraid I should
not count even these things as marks of success if I could not hope that
I had somewhat helped that movement of opinion which has been called the
New Reformation.[18]

ON THE ADVISABLENESS OF IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE [19]

This time two hundred years ago--in the beginning of January,
1666--those of our forefathers who inhabited this great and ancient
city, took breath between the shocks of two fearful calamities: one not
quite past, although its fury had abated; the other to come.

Within a few yards of the very spot [20] on which we are assembled, so
the tradition runs, that painful and deadly malady, the plague, appeared
in the latter months of 1664; and, though no new visitor, smote the
people of England, and especially of her capital, with a violence
unknown before, in the course of the following year. The hand of a
master has pictured what happened in those dismal months; and in that
true