PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. xlv 



X'iews of this sort are not entirely new; soniethini;" of the kind 

 was expressed hy ancient writers, altlionirh it was left to modern 

 times to more fully confirm the mastery of law and order, and the 

 idea that activity meant the breaking' away from liarmonious 

 quiescence. Later ideas have recognized a similarity of purpose in 

 nmndane interests which extends beyond a daily reawakening from 

 unconsciousness to a state of l)odily and mental activity with 

 memory of previous periods of consciousness in the indiviciual. It 

 includes the replacement of units and the succession of dominant 

 races. It goes even further and assumes the law of cycles to include 

 in its grasp intangible impulses, the temperament of races, the 

 family likeness and mental atavism ; embraces the reincarnation of 

 ancestral traits of body, finding a homologue in the reappearance of 

 mental characteristics. These when purely animal and of the 

 automaton order, we call intuition. They direct the infant to cry, 

 the sheep to eat grass, the wolf to devour the sheep and the bird 

 to build a nest and migrate. Nor is this intuitive impulse confined 

 to the animal world, it is observable in the vegetable, in the shrink- 

 ing from touch and conse(|uent tired feeling of the sensitive plant, 

 in the night-folding flower of the CEnothera and in the closing over 

 on its victim of the Drosem leaf. Nor is it absent from the mineral 

 world. Among growing crystals we detect it in the interlacing 

 spicules of ice, in a network of cyanite where each crystal in its 

 struggle to grow greater bends about to avoid its fellow crystal 

 imbued with a similar purport. How these several attributes are 

 maintained and stored in the germ, must remain forever a marvel- 

 lous mystery, although constant repetition would indicate a 

 governance l)y law. 



Kecognition has been made of the existence of influences, forces 

 or impulses, which may, from the aspect of the individual organism, 

 be malign. These the student c-ontends are natural concomitants 

 of life, for the interests of the unit necessarily become subordinate 

 to tlie welfare of his community and his race in their com])etition 

 and struggle for continuance on the face of the earth. We have 

 to differentiate between Man, an order of beings, and ' man ' an 

 egotistical unit whose naturally selfish aspect is to regard the world 

 as his oyster, and whose first instinct is self-preservation. Mai- 



