200 ANNUAL addi;kss by trofessor duns^ d.d._, f.e.s.e., 



The President. — The next business before the meeting is the 

 Annual Addi-ess, which Professor Duns has been so good as to 

 prepare. Unfortunately lie is not able to be present at the 

 meeting, but the Rev. R. P. McLeod Las kindly consented to i^ead 

 the Address for him. 



STONE FOLK-LORE. Bj Professor DuNS. D.D., F.R.S.E., 



F.S.A.Scot., &c. 



STUDENTS of the literature of any one great depart- 

 ment of scientific thought must often have noticed tlie 

 commanding influence of the introduction of new terms. 

 As the knowledge of phenomena increases, and additional 

 facts are discovered, long and well-known truths assume 

 new relations, both among themselves and with respect to 

 others still fresh, but, it may be, little known. How are the 

 new relations to be brought into line both with the new and 

 the old facts? The process is not so simple as may at first 

 appear. It implies the differentiation of clossly related but 

 not identical forms, and, if the integration sought for is to 

 be of use, tlie power to assign these to groups in themselves 

 well defined, and yet suggestive of the resemblances, 

 and the differences, among the members of each group. 

 Observation, induction, inference lead to generalization, and 

 this finds expression in a characteristic neAv term. This 

 method and its outcome have been influential both in the 

 science and the unscience of all time. Indeed, the distinc- 

 tion between the true and the false is not to be sought for in 

 defective method but in the mixed minor premise. Syn- 

 theses warranted only by facts are vitiated by being neither 

 tactful nor fanciful, but a blending of both.* The terms 

 nature, physics, metaphysics, are old-world terms; physi- 

 ology and psychology, in their present scope, are more 

 recent ; biology and sociology are more recent still. Many 

 Hke instances might be given, but, as having a special 

 bearing on the subject of the present paper, other two may 

 be named — anthropology and archaeology ; the latter, how- 

 ever, is only the archaic aspect of the former, but each term 



* The author, on being asked to look over Ihe lines referred to by the 

 Lord Chancellor (Lord Halsbury), replied : " I am not going into the 

 mixed minor premise : what I have in view is the practice of blending 

 traditional superstitions with hi^toiical facts, and assigning them the 

 same value as data for generalizations." — Ed. 



