Annual Address by the President. 
9 
the mind is often concerned with them during their absence, and 
must then have a representative with which to treat. Now most 
men picture matter chiefly in visual terms, though partly in terms 
of touch and muscular feelings, which last are so constantly aroused 
by the resistenee of things. The fallacy consists in clinging to the 
picture of matter, naively, uncritically, inaccurately constructed be- 
fore reflection out of our most familiar sensations, and in insisting 
that it correctly represents matter, although reason clearly demon- 
strates that sensations are no parts of matter, but only its effects. 
And the fallacy continues to impose on us because the picture works 
in subconsciousness, automatically registering dissatisfaction with 
force, as failing to fill out its notion of what matter is. As soon 
as we know that the picture of our imagination is formed during 
the early unthinking days of our ignorance, we know that it has 
no proper standing as against the critically tested conclusions of 
leason. But that does not check the dissatisfaction automatically 
suggested by the imagination, which philosophers feel in common 
with other men. The difference is that they disregard the feeling. 
The same conclusion as to the nature of matter is reached by 
another avenue of approach, as is pointed out by students of the 
evolution of mind. Probably the contribution of evolutionary theory 
to our knowledge of mind that bulks larger than any other, is the 
discovery, growing clearer with each year of study, that the human 
mind also is fundamentally just a group of activities, greatly compli- 
cated, mysteriously unified, wonderfully resourceful, marvelously 
progressive, self-conscious moreover, and free, and yet at bottom a 
system of Activities, no more. Activity, doing, will, that is the core 
of us: the rest, sensation, feeling, idea, they are but the effects of 
our own or Vther activities. A spirit, in etomology, is just the active 
principle of u liquid, and activity is what distinguishes the quick 
from the dealf. Even superman, in his ascending excellence, we 
must believe be but vaster and more skillfully and perfectly 
ordered activity, And man is distinguished from his humbler 
brethren, and higher animals from lower, by what they can do. 
Man hesitates, chaoses, plans, contrives, and fits things together in 
fulfillment of his purposes. As we descend the animal scale these 
activities first diminish, and then disappear, dull routine taking 
their place. But this implies, not a substitute for activity, but mere- 
ly its simplification. And the same decrease of complexity obtains 
as - the transition is Inade from animals to plants, and from plants 
to inorganic matter. This no doubt seems a hard saying to those 
who have not followed discoveries and discussions in this field, but 
to those who have, it is little more than a commonplace. We do not 
