240 Annual Report of the Council. 



classed those who, in the place of a belief (which he, as a 

 man of science, most firmly held and asserted to the last) 

 in a living Creator and Upholder of the Universe conscious 

 of what he is doing, profess to look for a first and final 

 cause in matter and motion and their so-called inherent 

 laws and qualities, and in his view such persons included a 

 large proportion of then living leaders in scientific inquiry. 

 His weapons in this attack were the rules of strict logic, 

 rigidly applied to every phrase and every term, and his 

 fashion was to strike at the earliest possible point. Thus to 

 a speculation upon the nature and origin of the Universe, 

 founded upon the conceptions of the speculator, Mr. Kirk- 

 man opposes the initial demur that, one man's conceptions 

 not being given to any other finite thinker, the argument 

 rests on the sophism of non datum pro dato. (See Paper 

 No. 13 in the appended list). Again, whilst confessing his 

 confirmed belief in what is commonly known as the first 

 law of motion, and accepting the axiom, as a mathema- 

 tician, within the limits of all human observation and 

 computation, he denies the right to treat the proposition as 

 scientifically demonstrated ; and he vouches, in support of 

 his own elaborate argument, the utterances of Newton, 

 Laplace, Thomson and Tait, and De Morgan. (See Paper 

 No. 14 in list.) 



The aim in Mr. Kirkman's papers of this class seems 

 to have been to meet the claim of materialism to founda- 

 tion upon physical laws, known or unknown, by an 

 inquiry how far the reputation of such of those laws as are 

 supposed to be known will stand examination, upon a 

 claim to absolute constancy, for all time, for all space, and 

 independent of conditions. His " Philosophy without 

 Assumptions," published in 1876, was written mainly with 

 the object of steadying the minds of philosophically inclined 

 young men, who might be hesitating on the materialistic 

 rail. This is a powerfully-written treatise upon such ques- 



