PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. lil 
ment of waywardness and caprice. | And yet this very way- 
wardness of the fitful breeze, when read aright, is a most 
powerful demonstration of its conformity to the reign of law. 
Its great mobility enables it to respond with alacrity to 
the changing complexes of forces for ever acting on it at 
every point, the resultants of these causing it to move along 
the lines of least resistance. 
Can we wonder that, especially in the countries of the 
storm-wind, it nurtured a superstitious people, who felt them- 
selves in the presence of a great mystery. It is a short 
step from “thou gentle wanderer, unseen, who bendeth the - 
thistles of Lora,’ to a viewless active intelligence, and then 
to peopling it in a confused way with ancestral heroes and 
gods. 
Such a vast intelligence with so many minds was too com- 
plex to be regarded as one, and so it may be that it came to 
be divided into many. In some lands these winds were 
regarded as deities, to be propitiated by sacrifice—powerful 
as friends, dangerous as enemies. Have we not the chilly 
Boreas, Eurus the swift and playful, the mild and vernal 
Zephyrus, the gloomy and rain-laden Auster, and their less- 
known companions, who were not so often successful in 
escaping from the Cave of Eolus. In another continent we 
meet with Mudjekeewis and !nis sons, in recognition of their 
close relationship ; and, indeed, all peoples have their many 
winds of heaven. 
There may be some, then, who like to regard our first 
conception of the air as of a vast unseen but ever-present in- 
telligence—a natural object-lesson in spiritual existence— 
our first ghost. indeed; and the separation of the one into 
the many, presumably our first analysis of ar! We know 
the air has been the origin of many an image and many an 
idea, and has given rise to many a myth. My object to-day, 
however, is to roughly outline the results of our study of its 
composition, and to indicate what this study has done for us 
in quite other directions. 
SPECULATIONS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS. 
But there were philosophers who, from times before his 
tory, set themselves the task of finding out the mystery of 
the world around them, and solving the riddle of the uni- 
verse. The recorded results of their efforts would seem to 
warrant the conclusion that the human intellect, unaided by 
modern experimental methods or systematic scientific re- 
search, was, somehow, enabled to reach conclusions which 
foreshadow some of our most important modern scientific 
