The Old Humanities and the New Science

by Sir William Osler

His immediate predecessor, the Professor of Greek at Christ Church, opened his presidential address of the year before with these words:

It is the general custom of this Association to choose as its President alternately a classical scholar and a man of wide eminence outside the classics. Next year you are to have a man of science, a great physician who is also famous in the world of learning and literature. Last year you had a statesman, who, though a statesman, is also a great scholar and man of letters, a sage and counsellor in the antique mould, of world-wide fame and unique influence.

Thus, though in himself sufficiently representative of humanistic culture, Osler was in this strict sense an alternate, and among the fourteen earlier Presidents of the Association three had like himself been Fellows of the Royal Society, which long since had abandoned even the pretence of concerning itself with classical studies which had been the very basis of the Revival of Learning.

The list of Presidents since the foundation of the Association may be a matter of interest to those in this country who may not have been aware of the existence and purposes of this organization of British scholars:

1904. The Right Hon. Sir R. H. Collins, M.A., LL.D., D.C.L., Master of the Rolls.

1905. The Right Hon. the Earl of Halsbury, D.C.L., F.R.S., Lord Chancellor.

1906. The Right Hon. Lord Curzon of Kedleston, G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E., D.C.L., F.R.S.

1907. S. H. Butcher, Esq., M.P., Litt.D., D.Litt., LL.D.

1908. The Right Hon. H. H. Asquith, M.P., K.C., D.C.L., Prime Minister.

1909. The Right Hon. the Earl of Cromer, G.C.B., O.M., K.C.S.I., LL.D.

1910. Sir Archibald Geikie, K.C.B., D.C.L., LL.D., Ph.D., President of the Royal Society.

1911. The Right Rev. Edward Lee Hicks, D.D., Lord Bishop of Lincoln.

1912. The Very Rev. Henry Montagu Butler, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

1913. Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, K.C.B., D.Litt., F.B.A., Head of the British Museum.

1914. Professor William Ridgeway, Litt.D., LL.D., Sc.D., F.B.A., Disney Professor of Archæology, Cambridge.

1915. Sir W. B. Richmond, K.C.B., R.A., D.C.L.

1916. The Right Hon. Viscount Bryce, O.M., D.C.L., LL.D., P.B.A., F.R.S.

1917. Professor Gilbert Murray, LL.D., D.Litt., F.B.A., F.R.S.L., Christ Church, Oxford.

As reported in the Annual Proceedings of the Association, Professor Murray at the meeting in 1918, in nominating his successor, spoke of him as a man, "who is not only one of the most eminent physicians in the world, but represents in a peculiar way the learned physician who was one of the marked characters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and stands for a type of culture which the Classical Association does not wish to see die out of the world—the culture of a man who, while devoting himself to his special science, keeps nevertheless a broad basis of interest in letters of all kinds."

In seconding this proposal, Sir Frederic Kenyon pointed out that it had come at a very appropriate time in the work of the Association, for: "During this last year our main activity has been directed towards getting representatives of Natural Science and of the Humanities to work together, on the principle that those subjects never should be in conflict with one another, but merely in friendly competition. Both are equally essential for a liberal education. It is a continuation and a symbol of that policy that we should ask Sir William Osler to become our President, and that he should have accepted cordially and readily, as he did. He is eminent as a man of science, is President of the Bibliographical Society, and represents scholarship in medicine in its best form."

It is quite possible that these last remarks may have suggested to the succeeding President an appropriate topic for his address, for he told the writer a few months later that he planned to talk on Science and the Humanities. He was already turning the matter over in his mind, but where he found time or inclination to write the address it is difficult to imagine.

Staggered by the loss of his son, an only child, who had fallen in action near St. Julien during the Passchendaele battles in September the year before, his days occupied with a succession of duties in connection with the war, his household filled as always with friends and visitors innumerable, and every young American or Canadian in service in England gravitating there, eager above all things to further the progress of the elaborate catalogue of his unique and valuable collection of books, he nevertheless set himself to prepare this, one of his most brilliant and what proved to be his last formal address.