ANNUAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. LIII 
we have spelled out were wrapt in an impenetrable mystery to the 
Greeks in the 5th century before Christ? 
As there is a needs be that much of metaphysic thought must 
be blended with the psychological processes which lead to every 
passage from the known to the unknown; so every great discovery 
of the physical philosopher tends to widen the metaphysical horizon 
within which he works. The world was never so full of metaphysic 
as it is to-day, when physical science is transforming the minds of 
men not so much by the secular boons it is dropping in the lap of 
modern civilization as by its underlying doctrines; and these doc- 
trines are often the mere metaphysical reflex or obverse of the 
physical truths they subtend. The psychological processes of every 
age are conditioned by its logical method, and its logical method is 
justified to itself by its metaphysic—by those necessary conceptions 
and fundamental relations which it takes to be architectonic of the 
Universe. What, for instance, can be more metaphysical than the 
latest conception of our highest physical science—the conception of 
vortex atoms moving in an imaginary frictionless fluid where the 
origin and the end of the motion are equally inconceivable? Or, 
take Mr. Darwin’s doctrine of hypothetical gemmules “ inheriting 
innumerable qualities from ancestral sources, circulating in the 
blood and propagating themselves, generation after generation, still 
in the state of gemmules, but failing to develop themselves into 
cells because other antagonistic gemmules are prepotent and over- 
master them in the struggle for points of attachment” *—in what 
respect is this doctrine one whit less metaphysical than St. Augus- 
tine’s doctrine of original and hereditary sin? Or, when the late 
Prof. Clifford tells us that “the Universe consists entirely of mind- 
stuff;” that “ matter is a mental picture,in which mind-stuff is the 
thing represented,” and that “ reason, intelligence, and volition are 
properties of a complex which is made up of elements themselves 
not rational, not intelligent, not conscious”—how does his “ mind- 
stuff” differ from the “ mind-stuff” of Pythagoras, + except in the 
* Galton: Hereditary Genius, p. 367; cf. Darwin: Animals and Plants 
under Domestication, (London,) vol. 2, p. 402. For a criticism on this 
physiological doctrine, see Encyclopedia Britannica, (‘‘Atoms,’’) vol. 3, 
p. 42. 
+ For the ‘‘mind-stuff’’ of Pythagoras, see Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, I, 
xi, 27. For the ‘‘mind-stuff’”’ of Clifford, see ‘‘ Mind,’’ January, 1878, p. 66. 
