50 Charles Robert Darwin, 



logic which compels the conclusion that either proceeds from the 

 other ; and this is more clearly brought out by the fact (3) that 

 we cannot think or try to think outside of that definition of Space, 

 knowable and unknowable, which describes it as the abstract of 

 all co-existences; and if this is so, then matter, motion, time, 

 force, cause, power, proximate and ultimate, if existences at all, 

 are co-existences without the possibility of either proceeding from 

 the others or from any other. (4) It is well for us to remember 

 right here, and all the time, that matter, however conceived and 

 however defined, is indestructible ; and that if, as has been said, 

 our conception of matter is that of co-existent positions which 

 offer resistance (and anything which offers resistance has some- 

 thing more than position), then space is simply an extension or 

 attribute of matter, and would offer resistance if near enough to 

 be touched by any of the physical or mental senses. Space is 

 matter; and it is matter, or substance, knowable and unknowable, 

 which is the abstract of all existences; and their co-existence pre- 

 vents procession and throws out all ideas of cause and anteced- 

 ence. 



While we may repay the debt which we owe to Darwin for that 

 which he did, we cannot discharge our obligations to him for that 

 which he did not do. 



Professor P. H. Van der Weyde: — 



I have two matters of interest to which I desire to call the at- 

 tention of the members of the Association. A few years ago, on 

 the occasion of the establishment of the Imperial University at 

 Tokio, in Japan, my highly esteemed friend, Professor E. S. Morse, 

 recently President of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, delivered there a series of lectures on Evolution. 

 He informs me that his auditors listened eagerly to the new doc- 

 trine, and accepted it much more readily than our people in Amer- 

 ica and Europe have clone, owing to the greater freedom from re- 

 ligious bias and prejudice which prevails in Japan. 



Professor van der Weyde also read a portion of a letter to Dar- 

 win from certain Dutch scholars, on the occasion of his sixty- 

 ninth birthday. The letter was accompanied by 217 photographs 

 of his admirers in Holland. It alludes to the fact that Dr. J. E. 

 Doornik, a physician of Amsterdam, advocated as early as 1808 

 and 1816, in published treatises on natural philosophy, the theory 

 "that the various modifications in which life was revealed in con- 

 secutive times, originated each from the other"; thus preceding 

 Lamarck in advancing evolutionary views. His arguments attract- 



