ORDINARY MEETING, January 20, 1879. 
Tiie Rev. R. Thornton, D.D., Vice-President, in the 
Chair. 
The minutes of the last meeting were read and confirmed, and the follow 
mg elections were announced 
Member W. H. Anderson, Esq., C.E., Ceylon. 
Associate Rev. H. Brass, M.A., F.G.S., Red Hill. 
The following paper was then read by the author:— 
FINAL CAUSE ; a Critique of the Failure of Paley and the 
Fallacy of Hume. By Joseph P. Thompson, D.D.,LL.D 
of Berlin. 
I N h ^ s " History of English Thought in the Eighteenth 
. Century/ 5 Mr. Leslie Stephen pays an earnest 
and impartial tribute to the two writers of that period, 
who were the foremost disputants upon the doctrine of a 
final cause in Nature as proving the existence of God,— 
David Hume and William Paley. Of Hume he says : — 
We have in his pages the ultimate expression of the 
acutest scepticism of the eighteenth century, — the one articu- 
late statement of a philosophical judgment upon the central 
questions at issue. 55 * And again : — “ Hume 5 s scepticism 
completes the critical movement of Locke. It marks one 
of the great turning-points in the history of thought. From 
* Chap. vi. sec. 3. 
