president's address — SECTION J. 259 



selves, a new scene lies before us. So far from being confronted by 

 inert states of consciousness, we are in a region of activity and life. 

 Our experiences are emphatically ours ; they are linked to each other 

 as they occur in the unity of consciousness, and form part of a con- 

 tinuous series. The mind, as Locke used to say, compares and com- 

 pounds. Even the comparison of two sensations or ideas, and the 

 knowledge of their likeness or difference, implies a discriminating in- 

 telligence. It has become a commonplace of mental science that the 

 simplest perception of a material object is a mental construction. 

 Even here, the mind is not a mirror or camera obscura, passively re- 

 ceiving what is impressed upon it. When we look at any object we 

 add the results of past experience to the sensations of the moment, and 

 it is only thus that the object of perception stands out before us. The 

 activity of memory and of the combining imagination is incessant ; 

 and each of us, attracted by some things, while indifferent and inattentive 

 to others, builds up for himself out of the material of his experiences a 

 world of his own. But, as truth-seekers, we desire a knowledge of facts 

 and laws which shall truly represent reality, and shall be valid for every 

 intelligence. How do we set about this task ? Not, certainly, by 

 laying ourselves open passively to impressions which may be excited 

 by the outer world ; that would give us a chaos, not a cosmos. We 

 fasten our attention on certain aspects of things to the exclusion of 

 others. The man of science is active in his observations and experi- 

 ments, forming conjecture after conjecture, and comrelling nature to 

 answer his questions ; and it is through this glorious activity of thought 

 that his triumphs have been achieved. Further, we speculate on the 

 nature and meaning of the world as a whole. This mind of ours, which 

 some would resolve into so many states passively accompanying cerebral 

 changes, inquires into the nature of mind and matter and their relations ; 

 and in its quest for a principle which will explain the universe it dares 

 to constitute itself, in the great phrase of Plato, the spectator of all 

 time and of all existence. And when we tuni from the theoretical to 

 the practical side of life, is it not true that every human being is engaged, 

 for good or evil, in moulding his own character ? The facts of purpose 

 and choice cannot be omitted from our estimate of human life. We 

 are drawn by ends which we place before ourselves and which we strive 

 to attain ; and the attraction of ideals which hover before us, and 

 which some among us would follow to the death, is very different from 

 the forward push of a mechanical cause. 



On the theory of materialism our purposes and ideals are of no 

 Teal value, since, after all, our actions, good or bad, are the necessary 

 results of molecular motions in the brain. As a consequence moral 

 precepts, as statements of what we ought to do, are useless ; morality 

 expires ; and the problem of evil ceases to have any meaning, since all 

 actions are on the same level in the series of inevitable events. A theory 

 which leads to such conclusions cannot be a true representation of human 

 nature. The life of man has its deepest meaning in ethical endeavor, 

 not as the expression of mechanical forces over which we have no con- 

 trol. 



