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working by laws we can examine in the chemical laboratory, produces all these 
effects, produces even that state of brain which accompanies the desire to speak 
of the wonder of it all. And the same laws will inevitably hurl all into con- 
fusion and darkness again; and where will all our joys and fears, and all our 
scientific satisfaction, be then? 
As students of Science, we have no right to shrink from this point of view; 
we are pledged to set aside prepossession and dogma, and examine what seems 
possible, wherever it may lead. Even life itself may be mechanical, even the 
greatest of all things, even personality, may some day be resoluble into the 
properties of dead matter, whatever that is. We can all see that its coherence 
rises and falls with illness and health, with age and physical conditions. Nor, 
as it seems to me, can anything but confusion of thought arise from attempts to 
people our material world with those who have ceased to be material. 
An argument could perhaps be based on the divergence, as the mathematician 
would say, of our comprehension of the properties of matter. For though we 
seem able to summarise our past experiences with ever-increasing approxima- 
tion by means of fixed laws, our consciousness of ignorance of the future is only 
increased thereby. Do we feel more, or Jess, competent to grasp the future 
possibilities of things, when we can send a wireless message 4,000 miles, from 
Hanover to New Jersey? 
Our life is begirt with wonder, and with terror. Reduce it by all means to 
ruthless mechanism, if you can; it will be a great achievement. But it can make 
no sort of difference to the fact that the things for which we live are spiritual. 
The rose is no less sweet because its sweetness is conditioned by the food we 
supply to its roots. It is an obvious fact, and I ought to apologise for remarking 
it, were it not that so much of our popular science is understood by the hasty to 
imply an opposite conclusion. If a chemical analysis of the constituents of sea 
water could take away from the glory of a mighty wave breaking in the sun- 
light, it would still be true that it was the mind of the chemist which delighted 
in finding the analysis. Whatever be its history, whatever its physical correla- 
tions, it is an undeniable fact that the mind of man has been evolved; I believe 
that is the scientific word. You may speak of a continuous upholding of our 
material framework from without; you may ascribe fixed qualities to something 
you call matter; or you may refuse to be drawn into any statement. But any- 
way, the fact remains that the precious things of life are those we call the 
treasures of the mind. Dogmas and philosophies, it would seem, rise and fall. 
But gradually accumulating throughout the ages, from the earliest dawn of 
history, there is a body of doctrine, a reasoned insight into the relations of exact 
ideas, painfully won and often tested. And this remains the main heritage of 
man; his little beacon of light amidst the solitudes and darknesses of infinite 
space; or, if you prefer, like the shout of children at play together in the culti- 
yated valleys, which continues from generation to generation. 
Yes, and continues for ever! A universe which has the potentiality of 
becoming thus conscious of itself is not without something of which that which 
we call memory is but an image. Somewhere, somehow, in ways we dream not 
of, when you and I have merged again into the illimitable whole, when all that is 
material has ceased, the faculty in which we now have some share, shall surely 
endure; the conceptions we now dimly struggle to grasp, the joy we have in 
the effort, these are but part of a greater whole. Some may fear, and some may 
hope, that they and theirs shall not endure for ever. But he must have studied 
Nature in vain who does not see that our spiritual activities are inherent in the 
mighty process of which we are part; who can doubt of their persistence. 
And, on the intellectual side, of all that is best ascertained, and surest, and 
most definite, of these; of all that is oldest and most universal; of all that is 
most fundamental and far-reaching, of these activities, Pure Mathematics is the 
symbol and the sum. 
The following Papers were then read : 
1. The Nature of X-Rays. By Professor C. G. Barxua, I’.R.S. 
