187 



of rules be established such as are known in all public libraries. That is 

 simply the scope of the last resolution. 



The resolutions were put, and carried unanimously. 



The President. — Before the Address is read, it is customary to ask if any 

 Member has anything to urge or any remarks to make in regard to the 

 general management of the Institute. 



[An interval here elapsed, during which there was no response.] 



Professor Kirk then delivered the following Address 



ANNUAL ADDRESS. 



My Lord Shaftesbury — Ladies and G-entlemen — 



AN annual meeting is in some sort a time of reckoning. 

 That of such an institute as the Victoria is such a time, 

 not so much in a commercial sense as in that of the navigator, 

 or traveller, who observes and calculates, that he may know 

 his true position and the direction in which he is tending. 

 The winds and currents of contemporary thought have been 

 acting upon us during another year, and it cannot but be well 

 that we should, as far as possible, ascertain what their com- 

 bined effect has been. 



If I were asked to indicate the most dangerous set of the 

 currents by which our course has been affected, I should refer 

 at once to the doctrine of evolution,-'^ so-called. A writer in 

 one of our popular magazines* lately put the question as to 

 whether this doctrine makes it difficult to believe in im- 

 mortal souls.^^ He was evidently inclined to answer in the 

 affirmative, so he hoped that ^' some means might be found 

 of reconciling those instincts of which the belief in immortality 

 was a product — that is, seeing the belief itself, at least in its 

 present form, must die ! He imagines that what he calls the 

 essence of that belief must remain, but cannot tell what 

 that essence may be ! Should this utterance express a 

 general state of mind among the most important classes in 

 society, we are clearly drifting from our course, and are 

 loudly called upon to inquire as to how our direction may be 

 changed. 



It is, I think, because this doctrine of evolution so 

 powerfully affects men^s faith in all that is truly distinctive in 

 human nature, that it has become of such importance. It 

 appears, therefore, specially suitable to our present reckoning 

 that we should consider one, at least, of those points of diver- 

 gence in which this distinction is most clearly seen. The one 

 to which I have been directed specially to call your attention 



^ Fraser^s Magazine, for April, 1872. 



0 2 



