PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION A. 35 
expected that the progress of science will demonstrate the abso- 
lute validity of the mechanical view of Nature? Shall we finally 
ascertain that there are nothing but atoms and void? This is a 
question which I propose to answer “by considering the philo- 
sophical character of the explanation of natural phenomena. 
rt: 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECT OF ATOMISM. 
32. The Problem of Science Stated.—From the point of view 
of Natural Philosophy in the older sense of that term, when it 
did not denote, as is now often supposed, merely experimental 
physics, the problem of science may be thus generally stated. 
The whole content of the reaction, through the media of the 
senses, or in any other way, of the external world upon human 
consciousness, may, in the last analysis, be regarded as an array 
and succession of phenomena ; this constitutes the material which 
it is the function of intellect to render intelligible. ‘“ Die Welt 
ist meine Vorstellung,” said Schopenhauer ; the phenomena are 
our data, and behind them we cannot go, except in imagination. 
In other words, we must perforce take the phenomena as the 
empirical facts to be reduced to system. Very little considera- 
tion will show that the unifying system is projected, as it were, 
by the rntellect on to the phenomena. The nature of all science, 
we may say, substantially in the words of the philosopher 
quoted, consists in this, that “we comprehend the illimitable 
manifold of perceptible phenomena, under comparatively few 
abstract conceptions, from these constructing a system by means 
of which we have all those phenomena completely in the power 
of our knowledge, and can explain the past and determine the 
future.” 
33. Phenomena Orgamcally United by Ideal Relations In- 
tellectually Conceived—We may say, therefore, that the body 
of science is made up, not of facts merely, but of organised facts, 
and the world is intelligible, not in virtue of the phenomena 
themselves, but in virtue of their organic union, through ideal 
relations, intellectually conceived. This is what Professor 
Ferrier means when he says that the deliverance of testimony of 
the senses is, per se, nonsense (a). The formation of abstract 
conceptions under which all facts are subsumed, the establish- 
ment of ideal relations by means of which all phenomena are 
unified, are processes in their very nature intellectual; that is, 
they proceed, not from the senses, but from the intellect. And 
in the genesis of such conceptions and relations, validity depends 
(a) Institute of Metaphysics, 2nd Edit., 1856. Prop. X. In particular sec. 9, p. 
c2 
