Vice- President's Address. 401 



logic dealt have been set in other, their true relations, by the 

 discovery of new facts. Strong confidence in speculative 

 views then current has given place to hesitancy ; generalisa- 

 tions held unassailable have been found unwarranted by tlie 

 data appealed to in their behalf; progress has been setting 

 up its way marks by the explosion of old errors and the 

 revival of long-neglected truths ; knowledge has increased ; 

 the domains of science have been increased and widened. 

 Old facts have been, and are being, set in new relations, and 

 in the altered relations they stand out in new and striking 

 lights. Things but recently undreamed of have become com- 

 mon-place realities. Aspects of thought which a few years 

 ago were no more than the bodying forth of strong imagina- 

 tion, are now current as undisputed truths. It is well if 

 honest workers can in the midst of such changes keep the 

 heart and the habit to assimilate the elements that have 

 become potential by the new circumstances and the new 

 relations, and all through the changes retain not identity 

 only, but power also — power to swim against any tide which 

 would sweep from^them that consciousness of manly individu- 

 ality, and that force of free will, which are their heritage as 

 true men. Dead fish swim with the tide. And if workers, 

 especially young workers, so many of whom are on our roll 

 as Fellows, may hope to keep clear of that rapid speculative 

 rush which at present meets us in biology, it will only be by 

 unsw^erving homage both to the laws and the limits of true 

 method — painstaking observation in order to legitimate in- 

 ference, and inference in order to deduction, or the exhibition 

 of law. 



Writing in July last. Max Muller said, " Definition is the 

 only panacea for all our present philosophical misery." But 

 the first step towards a definition of several most vital points 

 in current biology shows definition itself to be impossible, 

 because all workers acknowledge that the points themselves 

 suggest relations that are not yet thoroughly known. And 

 the consequence too often is a crop of mere assumptions for 

 which there is no warrant but a subjective one — the mental 

 bent of the student. Thus amidst all the lavish riches of 

 recent science, and even the clear exhibition of true method 



