Perchance some
day our natural learning, gathered in our varied walks of life, and
submitted in open council, may survive even Parliamentary strife;
perchance our resolutions, though no sign-manual immediately grace
them, are the informal bills which ministers and oppositions shall
one day discuss, Parliaments pass, royal hands sign, and the fixed
administrators of the will of the nation duly administer.
These thoughts on the future, rather than on the passing influence
of our congressional work, have led me to the simple design of the
address which, as President of this Section, I venture to submit to
you to-day. It is my object to put forward a theoretical outline of
a community so circumstanced and so maintained by the exercise of
its own freewill, guided by scientific knowledge, that in it the
perfection of sanitary results will be approached, if not actually
realised, in the co-existence of the lowest possible general mortality
with the highest possible individual longevity. I shall try to show
a working community in which death,--if I may apply so common and
expressive a phrase on so solemn a subject,--is kept as nearly as
possible in its proper or natural place in the scheme of life.
HEALTH AND CIVILISATION.
Before I proceed to this task, it is right I should ask of the past
what hope there is of any such advancement of human progress.
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