Wellington Philosophical Society. 149 



intention could he; yet he told us that thus, and thus only, could we 

 understand it. Mr. Darwin's opinion that his explanation rendered the 

 phenomenon understandable was, perhaps, due to the fact that he un- 

 consciously attributed Intention to his personified conception of sexual 

 selection. In order to understand this tendency to personify abstractions, 

 it was necessary to look at the process by which abstractions were made. 

 Professor Huxley, in his book on "Hume," expressed the opinion that they 

 were made by a process analogous to that by which compound photographs 

 were made. "In dreams," he said, "the outlines of the hills are ill-marked, 

 and the rivers have no defined banks. They are, in short, generic." One 

 might as well say that those of Turner's pictures which conveyed the effect 

 of a hazy atmosphere were generic. The general idea of " river," indeed, must 

 include the most clearly as well as the most dimly seen. What we really 

 did was to take one river, either real or imaginary, as our representative 

 instance, and to say to ourselves: "Let this stand for river in general." 

 In fact, we personified, or at any rate individualized, our conception of 

 "river." Thus, abstraction was, in its very beginnings, based, in a sense, 

 on illusion. The difficulty in the famous puzzle of "Achilles and the 

 Toitoise" was due to this tendency to take our thought-image for a reality. 

 When we had brought "Achilles and the Tortoise," or some more convenient 

 symbols, as close together as we could imagine them to be without touching 

 each other, we still left the minimum visibile between them. We then 

 proceeded to halve this, or thought we did so, but in reality we conceived 

 the minimum visibile over again as lying between them. We might, of 

 course, continue that process indefinitely. 



^ 2. "On Maori Ancestry," by J. Coutts Crawford, P.G.S. 

 (Transactions, p. 414.) 



Seventh Meeting : 19th October, 1887. 



Dr. Hutchinson, President, in the chair. 



New Member. — Mr. J. Home. 



Papers. — 1. " Polynesian Folk-lore, Part II. — The Origin of 

 Fire," by E. Tregear, F.R.G.S. (Transactions, p. 369.) 



2. " Notice of a Discovery of Illuminating Gas," by J. C. 

 Crawford, F.G.S. 



The writer stated that he had lately commenced to sink a bore for 

 water on the flat land on the Hataitai Peninsula, somewhat nearer the 

 western than the eastern hills. The bore passed through 54 feet of sand, and 

 then through more than 10 feet of stiff blue clay, when yesterday afternoon 

 the man in charge of the work was surprised by a sudden rush of gas up the 

 pipe, preceded by the ejection of some water. The gas continues to rise in 

 great force, it burns with a yellowish-red flame by daylight, white at night ; 

 there is no smell of sulphur, and it is reported as being a pure illuminating 

 gas. There is nothing as yet discovered to show from what rocks the gas is 

 derived, or under what conditions it is formed. 



[Since the above meeting, Mr. McKay, of the Geological Department, 

 has collected samples of the gas for test in the laboratory, and Mr. Skey 

 found it to be marsh gas, or light carburetted hydrogen, which might answer 

 for heating purposes, but not for illuminating. It is probably derived from 

 the decomposition of swamp matter buried at a great depth from the surface ; 

 and this view has been confirmed by the cessation of the gas- escape after 

 about seven days' duration. — J. Hector.] 



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