450 Proceedings. 



always had the interests of the Society at heart. It was a cause of great 

 regret by the Society that he had left them, but they could tender him 

 their hearty thanks and wish him every success in his new sphere. 

 The report and balance-sheet were passed. 



2. The following Office-bearers were then elected for the 

 current year -.—President — W. M. Maskell, F.R.M.S. ; Vice- 

 presidents — Hon. G. B. Johnson and Mr. A. de B. Brandon ; 

 Council — Sir James Hector, Dr. Newman, Messrs. Hulke, Govett, 

 Travers, M'Kay, and Tregear ; Secretin-;/ and Treasurer — B. B. 

 Gore ; Auditor — W. E. Vaux. 



General Meeting. 



Papers. — 1. " Some Moot Points in Mental Science," by 

 W. W. Carlile, M.A. 



Abstkact. 



In a recent paper the writer had alluded to Professor Huxley's theory 

 of the mental process of abstraction — viz., that it was analogous to the 

 physical process of taking compound photographs ; that, accordingly, the 

 vague representations of men, hills, and rivers in dreams might rightly be 

 described as generic — and had maintained that this theory could not stand, 

 because a general conception must cover contradictories, and contradic- 

 tories could not be represented in one image. The question had been 

 threshed out 200 years ago. Locke had alluded to the general idea of 

 a triangle as one that " must neither be oblique nor rectangle, neither 

 equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once.'' 

 On this Bishop Berkeley had taken him to task in his gravely sarcastic 

 fashion, observing that if any one could frame such an idea as this of a 

 triangle " he would be sorry to dispute him out of it." The difficulty had 

 not escaped Kant. Its solution, indeed, formed an important feature in 

 his Philosophy. " No image," he observes, " could ever be adequate to our 

 conception of a triangle in general." He was of opinion, therefore, that not 

 images, but what he calls schemata, lie at the foundation of general con- 

 ceptions. The schema is a sort of mental rule for the construction of a 

 triangle, and is a product of thought as distinguished from reproductive 

 imagination simply. The distinction was all-important. The two faculties 

 were often in inverse proportion to one another. This radical error was the 

 source of further error, in connection with the doctrines of necessary truth 

 and causation. In Professor Huxley's view, the reminiscence " I was in 

 pain yesterday," might " properly be said to be necessary.',' If that was 

 so, the distinction between necessary certainty and ordinary certainty was 

 wholly illusory; and, in that case, nearly all that had been called philosophy. 

 From Plato to Hume, was idle winds. The truth, however, was far otherwise. 

 After some further argument and illustration, intended to bring out the 

 writer's view of the character of necessary truth, he went on to say that 

 1'rofessor Huxley divided so-called necessary truths into two classes— (1) 

 Identical propositions ; (2) Truths of experience. Identical propositions, 

 such as "A is A," depended on the possibility of intelligible speech. 

 This took it for granted that it was the easiest thing in the world to say 

 what was an identical proposition, and what was not. If we thought it out, 

 however, it did not seem to be so. " Black is black" is an id< ■ntiral pro 

 position, no doubt. What about •• Black and white in alternate patches 

 are piebald " ? That was also, perhaps, identical. What about " Blue 

 and yellow mixed are green"? That was certainly not identical, yet it 

 Stood on a different footing from a mere truth of experience, as we could 

 see the blue and yellow in tin green that is, the whole cause in the effect. 

 This seemed to him to make very clear the inadequacy of the famous Humist 



