THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF THE INSTITUTE 



WAS HELD (BY KIND PERMISSION) IN THE ROOMS OF 

 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS ON MONDAY, 

 JUNE 2 1st, 1909, 



The Right Hon. The Earl of Halsbury, D.C.L., F.R.S., 

 President, in the Chair, 



When the following Address was delivered by the President : — 



I BELIE YE on a former occasion I called attention to' the 

 regular succession of the waves of unbelief and super- 

 stition ; their forms vary infinitely, but their succession in 

 regular periods is certain. Psychological study has become 

 popular, and disputes now more than 2,000 years old have been 

 revived sometimes in the very terms (allowing for the difference 

 of language) that were urged in the times gone by, and meta- 

 physical inquiry has been aroused in no common degree in our 

 time. 



Mr. Buckle in his History of Civilization said that it may be 

 fairly supposed that the advance of European civilisation is 

 characterised by a diminishing influence of physical laws and 

 an increasing influence of mental laws. 



Such phrases are perhaps only intended to express epigram- 

 matically what are the prevailing views upon such subjects, and 

 when we talk of physical laws we mean the facts ascertained 

 by experiment or trial, and by mental laws the results of what 

 many men have told us of the operations of their own 

 individual minds ; and the same authority tells us that the 

 mental laws for which he claims such successful influence have 

 only so far been ascertained by proceeding in one of two ways. 



He says that if two men of equal ability and equal honesty 

 employ different methods in the study of the mind, the conclu- 

 sions they obtain will invariably be different, and accordingly, 

 the metaphysicians are divided into two schools of thought 

 between wdiich there is no possibility of concurrence. Now I 

 have no intention of enterino; into the conflict, fascinatincp as it 



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