ANNUAL MEETING. 



g 



enhanced by the fact that he was a Christian who was not ashamed 

 to acknowledge Christ. (Applause.) 



I have much pleasure in seconding this resolution. 



The resolution was put to the Meeting and carried by 

 acclamation. 



The Chairman. — I will now call on Dr. Kidd. 



Dr. Walter Kidd. — On behalf of the Council and officers I beg 

 to thank you for your resolution. 



The Chairman. — It is now my pleasant duty to call on 

 Dr. Flinders Petrie for his address. (Applause.) You will probably 

 anticipate the nature of the subject on which he is going to address 

 you. 



The Annual Address (illustrated by lantern slides) was then delivered 

 by Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie, D.C.L., as follows : — 



THE ADDRESS. 



Introduction. — The essential difference between mediaeval 

 thought and modern thought is that the mediseval scholar 

 dealt with what ought to he according to the premises and 

 convictions with which he started ; the modern student deals 

 with what is, having learnt by bitter experience the fallacies 

 and hopelessness of trusting to systems of theory however 

 beautiful. The further we go wdth ISTature the more we learn 

 that a solution need not be the solution, that a deduction which 

 may seem certain enough for the known facts, may be modified 

 or even reversed by unknown facts not yet even imagined. 



Hence we must carefully separate between the physical facts 

 that we have to deal with, and the framework of theory into 

 which they may be fitted. The facts must remain, however 

 much our appreciation of them may be modified by new facts, 

 which may contradict our suppositions. The man who argues 

 that there can never be any solution of the facts but that 

 which seems inevitable to him is as truly a mediaevalist as 

 Cosmas Indicopleustes. 



And repeatedly we find that new materials and new views 

 which seem to have led us completely away from the old 

 ground, only bring us back to a different side of the past 

 battlefield. Freewill and fatalism are likely to be just as 

 severely felt, as harshly dominant in debate, when reached by 



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