2 
The following gentlemen were re-elected 
unanimously to the offices named Sir James 
Cockle, president j Mr. Charles Coxen, vice 
president j Mr. Diggles and Dr. Bancroft, cura- 
tors j Mr. A. Raff, treasurer ; Mr. J. S. Gray, 
honorary secretary. 
A ballot being taken for four members of 
council, the following gentlemen were elected : 
— Dr. Waugh, Mr. Pettigrew, Captain O’Reilly, 
and Mr. S. W. Griffith. 
The President then delivered the following 
address : — 
I return my thanks to the society for again 
honoring me with a seat in this chair, and 
allowing me to defer until now this, the annual 
address expected of the President. If we have 
made no decided progress during the past year 
we need not feel discouraged. The kindred 
society of New South Wales had its long inter- 
val of silence and inactivity, yet the lapse of 
fifty years has left it flourishing in unimpaired 
vitality. I doubt not but that our society will 
survive similar untoward periods, and that its 
earlier members will one day be recognised as 
men who labored, earnestly and successfully, to 
sustain and perpetuate the oldest scientific 
institution in the colony. I have also to offer 
thanks to the society for having dispensed with 
an address from me on the last anniversary. As 
it is desired that I should not, on the present 
occasion, pass over this part of my official duty, 
I once more fall into a current of thought which 
runs through my previous addresses, and, 
indeed, pervaded the few remarks which I made, 
in lieu of a formal address, at our last annual 
meeting. 
We know what ambiguity lurks in the word 
law. We have laws of conduct, penal, yet 
often disobeyed j laws of nature, without penal- 
ties, but uniformly obeyed ; laws of thought, 
without either penalty or uniform obedience. 
Law of Nature is itself an ambiguous term. It 
may mean natural equity as distinguished from 
municipal law. It may mean a law of conduct 
whose penalties are not inflicted by man, as 
when intemperance is followed by death, or 
mental or bodily disease. It may mean the 
usages which the phenomena of the external 
world are wont to follow ; and I have already 
tried to show that no other scientific meaning 
ought to be attached to the term. If we allow 
a metaphor to allure us into the belief that 
science can lay down immutable courses, with 
which nature’s ways must of necessity corres- 
pond, we may be led to undervalue experience 
and testimony. 
And what is experience ? Experience in 
relation to knowledge and apart from its con- 
nection with practical dexterity, is the observa- 
tion and memory — first, of things and states of 
things ; secondly, of events — that is to say, of 
the changes of things and states of things ; 
thirdly, of sequences — that is to say, of the order 
in which events have ocourred. Experience, 
therefore, is of the present and past, for, until 
the future shall have becomo the present and 
past, there can be no observation or memory of 
its things, states, events, or sequences. Then 
what light can experience throw on the future ? 
None whatever. Anticipation of the future is 
prediction, not history or narrative. The light 
is shed by the mind itself, which is so consti- 
tuted that, whenever two natural events have 
been observed to occur in a certain order, an 
instinctive expectation arises that an event like 
the first will always be followed by one like the 
second. In strictness, belief relates to the pre- 
sent and past, and expectation to the future, 
but we shall be exact enough if we say that, in 
the human mind, and probably in that of ani- 
mals, there is an instinctive belief in the per- 
manence of every sequence. By this is 
meant, not that there is an innate 
conviction of the general proposition that 
all sequences are permanent, but that, as 
each particular sequence is experienced, a belief 
arises that such particular sequence is perma- 
nent. Experience corrects the mistakes of in- 
stinctive expectation. And one principal use 
of experience is to teach us to avoid what is 
false, not to choose what is true. Instinct leads 
us, quickly enough, to permanent sequences, for 
it tells us to regard all sequences, permanent or 
not, as permanent. Experience informs us 
which are accidental. And experience has her 
work to do. Thirteen at a table, spilling salt, 
giving away knives or scissors, death-watches, 
and the like, will suggest sequences regarded 
by some, perhaps even in the present day, as 
permanent. 
I think the proposition, that we instinctively 
regard all sequences as permanent, is suffici- 
ently proved by two instances given in my last 
address. Another instance* has quite recently 
fallen under my own observation. Those who 
associate with young children should notice 
and record such remarks. In life’s young 
day everything is new and striking. That 
which the wearied apathy of age passes 
without notice was, when seen for the first time, 
an object of eager curiosity. Vivid impressions 
are made by some sequences, frequent repetition 
forces others upon the attention, testimony con- 
tributes many. Of the mass of sequences the 
remote are disregarded, the unimportant for- 
gotten, the accidental detected. As infancy re- 
cedes, experience gains upon instinct. The im- 
portance or the duty of seeking accurate know- 
ledge becomes more keenly felt. But, until he 
has had time to gain experience, what else can a 
ffiild rely on than instinct ? If he had no in- 
* A child, about four years and three months old, 
said — “When you light your pipe it does not grow 
dark ” inhere. It struck me that she regarded smoking 
as a prophylactic. The remark was made probably early 
in the day, certainly long before nightfall The day, 
; January 8, 1872, was cloudy and gloomy, and, I think, 
rainy. 
