14 
president’s ADDRESS — SECTION A. 
away with some of our older authorities to whom we were taught to 
bow, only to set up others in their place P Why do scientists so pre- 
sumptuously consider that their methods of inquiry are so superior to 
all other methods? There are large differences of opinion among the 
very leaders of science. You are as unreliable as any other guides, 
and surely the subjects on which you ostentatiously proffer advice are 
not of such wide human interest as those on which others speak.” 
And this class of thinkers is liable to regard mathematics as the 
scientific method run mad. To them it seems that the subject matters 
of mathematics are worse than lacking inhuman interest; they are 
absolutely demoralising by reason of their great omissions. And the 
mental tasks of mathematics seem to these on no higher level than the 
guessing of conundrums. The scoffers think that the man who 
examines dead matter has a dead soul. As well might you say that 
because a poet reaches you through the medium of words he ought to 
he an expert lexicographer. 
Human kind is so knitted together that it is necessary for self- 
preservation that we outcasts assert our brotherhood to the rest. If 
others will recognise nothing else in common, let us insist on our 
common frailties. 
Perhaps the class that as a whole is most desirous and ever ready 
to mete out withering scorn to the mathematician is that of the 
metaphysicians. And it must be confessed that the debt is repaid in 
the same coin by many mathematicians. No doubt both classes will 
be able to give ample reasons for their attitudes, but I cannot believe 
that either is justified in the slightest degree. 
The metaphysicians, perhaps to an even greater extent than the 
frequenters of our section, arc regarded by many as cumberers of the 
ground that can be but just tolerated. Even in this Association they 
are denied a section. They have, however, very much in common with 
us. Even Professor P. (x. Tait, who no doubt would regard it as a 
compliment to be called the champion of the mathematical world 
against metaphysics, has himself been accused of dealing in the unclean 
thing. It is too delicate a matter for me to say whether T think this 
accusation warranted by the facts. It is but an example of how some 
mathematicians and physicists regard the work of others. Professor 
Tait is acknowledged by all to be a clear-headed logical arguer from 
his experimental or mathematical premises. And yet both on the 
mathematical and on the physical side he has been accused by those 
who have apparently as great a contempt as be for metaphysical 
reasoning, of using such reasoning himself. 1 do not deny that on the 
whole the mathematician’s and metaphysician’s main methods are vastly 
different. 1 think that these methods are perhaps as far apart as two 
useful methods of arriving at what seems truth to us groping mortals 
can well be. Nevertheless, I think that there is something more than a 
wish to put things strongly at t he bottom of these amenities. I believe 
that all kinds of human reasoning are subject to certain common 
classes of misdirection and true direction, and that when we are in 
the position of only viewing from a distance the effect of the one or 
the other, we see more clearly how the particular reasoning resembles 
that of an apparently widely different type. Wallace seems in bis 
“ Darwinism ” to be utterly unconscious that the arguments he bases 
on the existence of a “ Mathematical faculty ” and a “ Musical 
