844 president's address. 



fying the intellectual demand which the situation makes upon 

 our thought. Such satisfaction as they convey is but formal. 

 The thirst for explanation of the really significant aspect of the 

 complex phenomena of human activity remains practically 

 unquenched. 



There may be a relative truth in such a statement as that the 

 phenomena of human history and conduct, the manifestations of 

 the human spirit in art and literature, and of such thought-pro- 

 ducts as pure mathematics or the more concrete sciences, may be 

 viewed as products of physical sequences in the way of redistribu- 

 tions of matter and energy. In a sense, again, we may be entitled 

 to say that the human events thus conceived have been manifested 

 and epitomised in a structurally variable germplasm, perpetuated 

 by natural selection, and unfolded and brought to fuller fruition 

 as episodes in the functional activity of the modified protoplasm 

 of nerve tissue. 



I neither doubt the possibility nor deny the desirability for 

 certain purposes of naturalising in this way the facts and pro- 

 cesses of conscious human activity. 



Every mode of explanation is relative to a certain point of view. 

 Thus, it will be generally admitted that the hypothesis of human 

 society as constructed solely on the basis of the idea of wealth is 

 incompetent fully to explain the concrete phenomena either of 

 individual or of a corporate social and national life. Yet the 

 science of political economy which to a large extent depends on 

 such an hypothesis has nevertheless its own value and function. 

 Or again, I may borrow an illustration from an essay from which 

 I have already quoted, and point out that "no physicist really 

 supposes that he is dealing with anything else than a metaphysical 

 abstraction as distinguished from a real object, in a purely kine- 

 matical investigation.'"' 



But the utility of such admittedly provisional hypotheses 

 becomes ever the less the more the obvious complexity of the 

 actual fact obtrudes itself upon our mental horizon. In spite of 

 ourselves our point of view becomes altered; and it is no small 

 part of the discipline of the scientific intelligence to avoid the 



