294 REV. PROF. A. CALDECOTT, D.LITT.. D.D., ON 
express itself within us.” That (it may here be added) was seen 
long ago by even the scientist Tyndall, when in his Belfast Address 
to the British Association he compared attempts to explain “ con- 
sciousness ” to a man “ trying to lift himself by his own waistband ” ; 
and the fallacy has been more recently put by the late Professor 
Alexander Bain (to whose writings some of us owe much) when he 
compares it to an attempt “to get sunlight out of the cucumber,” 
which is itself a product of sunlight. One can join hands with 
Professor Caldecott in his ‘‘ contention that Heredity does not hold 
for Spirit,” though it may operate as a more or less powerful factor 
in the lower grades of Being which belong to the environment 
(physical, mental, and social) of the individual. 
Rev. JoHN TuCKWELL, M.R.A.S.:—Mr. Chairman, I welcome as 
an antidote to a paper which was read here a few weeks ago on 
Darwinism and Malthus, the very valuable paper to which we have 
just listened. That paper subordinated the rights of the individual 
to the claims of society to a dangerous degree. This one restores 
them to their place. But there are one or two expressions in it to 
which I should like to refer for a moment rather in the spirit of 
enquiry than of criticism. The professor says, “The inference 
I stand by is to a super-finite consciousness from which we come 
which may be said to express itself in us.” I confess this luoks 
very like pantheism. If it means that that super-finite conscious- 
ness continues all the way through our life and expresses itself in 
all our thoughts and words and deeds, and in our whole conduct, 
I do not see how that can be consistent with our separate indivi- 
duality, and if we have no individuality separate from the definite or 
super-finite consciousness from which we are supposed to proceed 
then that 7s pantheism, and I should emphatically differ from the 
learned professor. 
I notice also a sentence on the following page at which I am 
made to pause. The professor says, “I see no reason for thinking 
that soul succeeds soul in the way of generation.” 
This may involve very serious conclusions. If soul does not 
succeed soul in the way of generation then each soul must be derived 
immediately from the infinite. But life in the organism is continuous 
from the moment when the two germ cells become one. Is there at 
this moment a second life added from the infinite ? So far as I know 
no biology or physiology or psychology has any evidence to give 
