president's address SECTION J. 205 



questions implies, if it be made with any show of reason, that 

 these questions have been faced ; and experience proves that 

 philosophy, if denied admittance at the door, will come in at the 

 windows, and will make itself heard, if in no other way, in the 

 ostensible utterances of physics and physiology. 



I cannot conclude without referring, however briefly, to logic, 

 ethics, and aesthetics, as sciences at once theoretical and practical, 

 drawing their materials to a large extent from mental science while 

 connected with philosophy in their fundamental ])rinciples. In 

 aesthetics little has been done of recent years beyond assimilating 

 more thoroughly the results attained by Continental thinkers. 

 There are, I think, influences now at work in Australasia which 

 prophesy a deeper interest than has hitherto been taken among us 

 in the philosophy and history of art. The aspect of logical science 

 has been completely changed within the jiresent century. It was 

 remarkt d by Kant, that since the time of Aristotle logic had not 

 retraced a single step, nor had it been able to take one step in 

 advance. But now it must be confessed by the firmest adherents 

 of the traditional logic, that even formal logic has undergone some 

 changes, and has added to its territory a symbolic logic which ivas 

 little more than hinted at before. So powerful, indeed, are the 

 methods of symbolic logic, even in its simplest forms, that its 

 analysis goes far beyond the needs of ordinary reasoning, and 

 logicians are compelled to manufacture complicated arguments to 

 illustrate its strength. In inductive logic we have a study which, 

 though foreshadowed by Bacon, is pecidiarly the product of our 

 century, which follows closely the procedure of scientific thought, 

 and was impossible till Science had achieved its modern triumphs. 

 The indebtedness of inductive logic to Whewell, Herschel, and Mill 

 cannot be forgotten ; but in Great Britain and her dependencies 

 we have suffered, perhaps, by too great a deference to the autho- 

 rity of Mill, and we owe to Germany the best work which has 

 recently been done in this branch of study. In ethics and moral 

 philosophy a great change is now in progress. The individualistic 

 view of man which has been prominent in English thought is now 

 being supplemented, under various influences, by that older view 

 which represents man as essentially a social being, a member of a 

 social organism, fulfilling his own life most fully in living for others 

 as well as for himself. The two great schools of moral jjhilosophy 

 — one seeking to resolve morality into simpler elements, the other 

 denying that it can be so resolved — still remain ; but both have 

 been profoundly influenced by the thought of evolution, a concep- 

 tion, indeed, which was freely applied to the development of 

 morality before it found its way into natural science. The older 

 empirical doctrine, that morality has its origin within the lifetime 

 of the individual from egoistic or social impulses, is dying out, 

 and is replaced by the doctrine that the moral intuitions and 

 sentiments are the results of ages of evolution. The "long results 



