PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. xHii 



liim : unalilt' to grasp an idea either of creation or anniliilation, or 

 a condition preceding the one and succeeding the otlier, or of a 

 beginning or ending of time or limitation of distance. While there 

 is much that he cannot hope to understand, there are suppositions 

 lie cannot possibly accept, as that of birth without resultant death, 

 nor can he conceive of mental sensations, as 303^, love and hope, 

 without crediting the converse possibilities. There would be for 

 him no pleasure if there were no pain, no recognition of light 

 without that of darkness, nor of heat without cold. The percep- 

 tion of the one necessarily demands the condition of the other. 

 All nature teaches this to be a truth, analogy with cause and effect, 

 is everywhere constant, whether it be among phenomena typified by 

 the satisfying of an acid for its base, or among an entirely different 

 group exemplified in the fatigue wliicli follows strain. 



Keverting for a moment to pain, to excruciating pain, which 

 some people tell us they find hard to reconcile with their standard 

 of faith, let us picture a stricken creature, the moment before stored 

 with vitality, now the innocent victim of an accident which deprives 

 his nervous energv of control, and lets loose the impulses which 

 ordinarily are used only slowly as required for the well-being of the 

 body. Xo longer under restraint, these become intensified with a 

 correspondingly rapid exhaustion of vitality, and the dews of 

 anguish mark that intensity as beyond endurance. It is like the 

 burning of a candle at both ends in oxygen, the sum total of stored 

 energy is there used up in a very short time. 



When the student awoke to the value of classifying his observa- 

 tions and realized that order prevailed even among details appar- 

 ently dissimilar, great advance was made, and he was then able to 

 satisfy himself by repeated experiment that phenomena of nature 

 were subject to fixed relation which could be expressed as laws, and 

 he was also able to convince his fellows that, under similar treat- 

 ment, like results would ensue in their hands. 



Besides the phenomena he has systematized, he reasonably 

 assumes by analogy that there are others equally amenable to eluci- 

 dation, although efforts in many directions have so far met with 

 but indifferent success. 



