610 DISCUSSION ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSE. 
It is doubtless instructive to learn from high and competent authorities 
what the unadulterated or rather unvivified laws of physics applied to the 
universe will lead to. We are faced with a steady running down or 
degradation of energy to a predetermined end: without hope of novelty 
introduced at any stage of the process, all settled and dull, events just 
going through the hollow form of taking place. But that is all on the 
assumption that there is nothing or no one to wind it up or to guide it to 
some nobler end. Guidance has only recently intruded itself into the 
scheme of physics; but already there are guiding waves which determine 
the path of a particle of matter. And what the significance of those 
ouiding waves may be, whether they have any connexion with the guiding 
and directing influence which we perceive here displaying itself in certain 
observed phenomena that we call life and mind, is at present an un- 
answered question. 
To philosophise from a restricted point of view is interesting enough, 
but it is not conclusive. It does not fully account for the state of the warld 
to-day, nor can it be depended on to formulate its course to-morrow. 
In this beginning of a new century for the British Association we are 
turning our attention from the particles of matter to the spaces between 
them, where all the activity resides. We have thus, with Hinstein, begun 
a new era, but have not gone far as yet, but when we attend to space 
properly we shall find that life and mind are not limited to the surface 
of lumps of matter. Intelligence can be found throughout space. Life 
and mind, in their essence, are more important and far more permanent 
than any material universe ; they use it only for purposes of development 
and manifestation. I look forward to the future and see the Association, 
always seeking after truth, being led on to a psychical and physical 
immaterial reality of which in its present corporate capacity it has no idea. 
a ld 
