a i le le 
SC CC rE 
PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS, 39 
is a record of it in matter, and the present is based upon it; the future 
is the outcome of the present, and is the product of evolution. 
Existence is like the output from a loom. The pattern, the design 
for the weaving, is in some sort ‘there’ already; but whereas our 
looms are mere machines, once the guiding cards have been fed into 
them, the Loom of Time is complicated by a multitude of free agents 
who can modify the web, making the product more beautiful or more 
ugly according as they are in harmony or disharmony with the general 
scheme. I venture to maintain that manifest imperfections are thus 
accounted for, and that freedom could be given on no other terms, nor 
at any less cost. 
The ability thus to work for weal or woe is no illusion, it is a reality, 
a responsible power which conscious agents possess; wherefore the 
resulting fabric is not something preordained and inexorable, though by 
wide knowledge of character it may be inferred. Nothing is inexor- 
able except the uniform progress of time; the cloth must be woven, but 
the pattern is not wholly fixed and mechanically calculable. 
Where inorganic matter alone is concerned, there everything is 
determined. Wherever full consciousness has entered, new powers 
arise, and the faculties and desires of the conscious parts of the scheme 
-have an effect upon the whole. It is not guided from outside but 
from within, and the guiding power is immanent at every instant. 
Of this guiding power we are a small but not wholly insignificant 
portion. 
That evolutionary progress is real is a doctrine of profound signi- 
ficance, and our efforts at social betterment are justified because we 
are a part of the scheme, a part that has become conscious, a part 
that realises, however dimly, what it is doing and what it is aiming 
at. Planning and aiming are therefore not absent from the whole, 
for we are a part of the whole, and are conscious of them in 
ourselves. 
Hither we are immortal beings or we are not. We may not know 
our destiny, but we must have a destiny of some sort. Those who 
make denials are just as likely to be wrong as those who make assertions: 
in fact, denials are assertions thrown into negative form. Scientific men 
are looked up to as authorities, and should be careful not to mislead. 
Science may not be able to reveal human destiny, but it certainly should 
not obscure it. Things are as they are, whether we find them out or 
not; and if we make rash and false statements, posterity will detect 
us—if posterity ever troubles its head about us. I am one of those 
who think that the methods of Science are not so limited in their 
Scope as has been thought: that they can be applied much more 
widely, and that the Psychic region can be studied and brought under 
law too, Allow us anyhow to make the attempt. Give us a fair 
