Anniversary Address. 239 



Cartes could entertain tlie idea that mental problems are to 

 be worked out by machinery. 



Professor Clerk Maxwell, a schoolfellow of my own, and a 

 thinker of whom Scotland may well be proud, while she in 

 common with the University of Cambridge and philosophy 

 generally must lament his early death, delivered a very able 

 lecture at Bradford in 1873. He then propounded the 

 theory, 



"that atoms are prepared materials, which, formed by the skill 

 of the Highest, produce by their subsequent interaction all the 

 phenomena of the material world. Natural causes are at work, 

 which tend to modify, if they do not at length destroy, all the 

 arrangements and dimensions of the earth, and the whole solar 

 system. But though in the course of ages catastrophes have 

 occurred, and may yet occur, in the heavens ; though ancient 

 systems may be dissolved, and new systems evolved out of their 

 ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built— the 

 foundation stones of the material iiniverse — remain unbroken 

 and unworn." 



These are words which impart to the study of natural 

 phenomena a sublimity calculated to foster an appreciative 

 regard for the works of a Creative Intelligence. 



The doctrine of Evolution or Progressive Developement, 

 propounded a century ago by Lamarck, and which has lately 

 had its most able exponent in Charles DarAvin, has to a cer- 

 tain degree revolutionised the study of organic nature, and 

 has suggested to, and by its novelty encouraged, our younger 

 naturalists to devote much of their time and speculation to 

 Embryology, and specific affinities. 



In recapitulating his great work on " The Origin of 

 Species " Darwin observes, 



" Organs in a rudimentary condition plainly show that an early 

 progenitor had the organ in a fully developed state ; and this in 

 some instances necessarily implies an enormous amount of modi- 

 fication in the descendants. Throughout whole classes various 

 structures are formed on the same pattern, and at an embrionic 

 age the species closely resemble each other. Therefore I cannot 

 doubt that the theory of descent with modification embraces all 

 the members of the same class. I believe that animals have do- 



