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THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 15 
unintelligible trinity of commonsense (matter, life, mind) has been 
reinterpreted and transformed and put on the way to a new monism. 
In the third place, the iron determination of the older science, so 
contrary to direct human experience, so destructive of the free activity of 
life and mind, as well as subversive of the moral responsibility of the 
individual, has also been materially recast. It was due to the Newtonian 
causal scheme which, as I have indicated, has been profoundly shaken by 
recent developments. Relativity reduces substance to configuration or 
patterns, while quantum physics gives definite indications of indeterminism 
in nature. In any case, life through the ages shows clearly a creative 
advance to ever more complex organisation, and ever higher qualities, while 
mind is responsible for the creation of a whole realm of values. Weare thus 
justified in stressing, along with natural necessity, an increasing measure 
of freedom and creativeness in the world, sufficient at least to account for 
organic evolution and for the appearance of moral law and endeavour. 
This liberation of life and spirit from the iron rule of necessity is one of 
the greatest gains from the recent scientific advances. Nature is not a 
closed physical circle, but has left the door open to the emergence of life 
and mind and the development of human personality. It has, in its 
open flexible physical patterns, laid the foundation and established the 
environment for the coming of life and mind. The view, to which Huxley 
once gave such eloquent and poignant expression, of a dualism implanted 
in the heart of nature, of a deadly struggle between cosmic law and moral 
law, is no longer justified by the subsequent advances of science. 
But, in the fourth place, another dualism of a wider reach has appeared, 
which makes the universe itself appear to be a house divided against 
itself. For while the stream of physical tendency throughout the universe 
is on the whole downward, toward disintegration and dissipation, the 
organic movement, on this planet at least, is upward, and life structures are 
on the whole becoming more complex throughout the course of organic 
evolution. From the viewpoint of physics, life and mind are thus singular 
and exceptional phenomena, not in line with the movement of the universe 
asa whole. Recent astronomical theory has come to strengthen this view 
of life as an exceptional feature off the main track of the universe. For the 
origin of our planetary system is attributed to an unusual accident, and 
planets such as ours with a favourable environment for life are taken to be 
rare in the universe. Perhaps we may even say that at the present epoch 
there is no other globe where life is at the level manifested on the earth. 
Our origin is thus accidental, our position is exceptional, and our fate is 
