586 Meeting of the British Association. [Oct., 



lying beyond — a something sui generis, which he regarded not as 

 balancing and suspending the ordinary physical laws, but as working 

 with them and through them to the attainment of a designed end. 



What this something, which we call life, may be, is a profound 

 mystery. We know not how many hnks in the chain of secondary 

 causation may yet remain behind ; we know not how few. It would 

 be presumptuous indeed to assume in any case that we had already 

 reached the last hnk, and to charge with irreverence a fellow-worker 

 who attempted to push his investigations yet one step farther back. 

 On the other hand, if a thick darkness enshrouds all beyond, we 

 have no right to assume it to be impossible that we should have 

 reached even the last hnk of the chain — a stage where further 

 progress is unattainable, and we can only refer the highest law at 

 which we stopped to the fiat of an Almighty Power. To assume 

 the contrary as a matter of necessity, is practically to remove the 

 First Cause of all to an infinite distance from us. The boundary, 

 however, between what is clearly known and what is veiled in 

 impenetrable darkness is not ordinarily thus sharply defined. 

 Between the two there lies a misty region, in which loom the ill- 

 discerned forms of links of the chain which are yet beyond us ; 

 but the general principle is not afiected thereby. Let us fearlessly 

 trace the dependence of link on link as far as it may be given us to 

 trace it, but let us take heed that in thus studying second causes 

 we forget not the First Cause, nor shut our eyes to the wonderful 

 proofs of design, which, in the study of organized beings especially, 

 meet us at every turn. 



Truth we know must be self-consistent, nor can one truth con- 

 tradict another, even though the two may have been arrived at by 

 totally difierent processes : in the one case, suppose, obtained by sound 

 scientific investigation ; in the other case, taken on trust from duly 

 authenticated witnesses. None need fear the efi'ect of scientific 

 inquiry carried on in an honest, truth-loving, humble spirit, which 

 makes us no less ready frankly to avow our ignorance of what we 

 cannot explain than to accept conclusions based on sound evidence. 

 The slow but the sure path of induction is open to us. Let us 

 frame hypotheses if we will : most useful are they when ke])t in 

 their proper place, as stimulating inquiry. Let us seek to confront 

 them with observation and experiment, thereby confirming or 

 upsetting them as the result may prove; but let us beware of 

 placing them prematurely in the rank of ascertained truths, and 

 building furthei- conclusions on them as if they were. 



The speaker concluded his long and eloquent address in the fol- 

 lowing words : — " When from the phenomena of life we pass on to 

 those of mind, we enter a region still more profoundly mysterious. 

 We can readily imagine that we may here be dealing with phenomena 

 altogether transcending those of mere life, in some such way as 



