156 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS 
[August 2f, 1872- 
generally satisfactory to tire trade at large; and as in 
this matter they are treading- upon almost strange ground, 
they feel that this way would be largely prepared for 
them, and their labours would he much assisted by the 
fullest expression of opinion on every point bearing 
upon the question.” I have taken some pains to ascer¬ 
tain and, in the former part of this paper, partially to 
reproduce the opinions expressed several years ago by 
Council after Council of the Pharmaceutical Society, and 
other leaders in pharmacy on this same subject of phar¬ 
maceutical education. Their statements bear the stamp 
of much thought and mature deliberations extending 
over a long period, and are worthy of more careful 
perusal than has apparently been bestowed on them by 
most recent writers. My other contributions to the dis¬ 
cussion are the views I have expressed in the second and 
third parts of the paper, and for which I alone am re¬ 
sponsible. 
whose only musical instrument is a tom-tom, whose- 
only song is a monotonous chant ? 
Again, by tracing the gradual genesis of some of those- 
ideas which we now accept as “self-evident,” such, for 
example, as that of the “ uniformity of nature ”—we are 
able to recognize them as the expressions of certain in¬ 
tellectual tendencies, which have progressively aug¬ 
mented in force in successive generations, and now 
manifest themselves as mental instincts that penetrate 
and direct our ordinary course of thought. Such in¬ 
stincts constitute a precious heritage, which has been 
.transmitted to us with ever-increasing value through the 
long succession of preceding generations ; and which it 
is for us to transmit to those who shall come after us, 
with all that further increase which our higher culture 
and wider range of knowledge can impart. 
And now, having studied the working action of the 
human intellect in the scientific interpretation of nature, 
we shall examine the general character of its products; 
and the first of these with which we shall deal is our con- 
BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCE¬ 
MENT OF SCIENCE. 
The President’s Address. 
(Concluded from page 139.) 
We have an illustration of this progress in the fact of 
continual occurrence, that conceptions which prove 
inadmissible to the minds of one generation, in conse¬ 
quence cither of their want of intellectual power to ap¬ 
prehend them, or of their preoccupation by older habits of 
thought, subsequently find a universal acceptance, and 
even come to be approved as “ self-evident.” Thus the 
first law of motion, divined by the genius Newton, 
though opposed by many philosophers of his time as 
contrary to all experience, is now accepted by common 
consent, not merely as a legitimate inference from ex¬ 
periment, but as the expression of a necessary and 
universal truth; and the same axiomatic value is ex¬ 
tended to the still more general doctrine, that energy of 
any kind, whether manifested in the “molar” motion of 
masses, or consisting in the “molecular” motion of 
atoms, must continue under some form or other without 
abatement or. decay; what all admit in regard to the 
indestructibility of matter, being accepted as no less true 
of force, namely, that as ex nxhilo nil ft, so nil ft ad 
nihUum .* 
Lut, it may be urged, the very conception of these 
and similar ^ great truths is in itself a typical example of 
intuition. I he men who divined and enunciated them 
stand out above their fellows, as possessed of a genius 
^ tun 1 ' 1 U0 ‘ : only combine but create, of an insight 
which could clearly discern what reason could but dimly 
shadow forth. Granting this freely, I think it may be 
shown that the intuitions of individual genius are but 
specia ly exalted forms of endowments which are the 
general property of the race at the time, and which have 
come to be so in virtue of its whole previous culture.— 
ho, for example, could refuse to the marvellous apti- 
tude for perceiving the relations of numbers, which dis¬ 
played itself m the untutored boyhood of George Bidder 
and Zerah Colburn, the title of an intuitive gift ? But 
who, on the other hand, can believe that a Bidder or a 
Colburn could suddenly arise in a race of savages who 
cannot count beyond five ? Or, again, in the history of 
the very earliest years of Mozart, who can fail to recog¬ 
nize the dawn of that glorious genius, whose brilliant but 
brief career left its imperishable impress on the art it 
enriched. But who would be bold enough to affirm 
that an infant Mozart could be born amongst a tribe, 
4.1 1S ,, t ie which the doctrine now known a 
that ot the conservation of energy” was enunciated by Di 
Mayer, m the very remarkable essay published by him ii 
^titled - Die organische Bewegung in ikrem Zusam 
menhange mit dem Stoffwecksel.’ 
ception of matter and of its relation to force. 
The psychologist of the present day views matter 
entirely through the light of his own consciousness : his 
idea of matter in the abstract being that it is a “ some¬ 
thing ” which has a permanent power of exciting sensa¬ 
tions ; his idea of any “property ” of matter being the 
mental representation of some kind of sensory impres¬ 
sion he has received from it; and his idea of any pazlicu- 
lar kind of matter being the representation of the whole- 
aggregate of the sense-perceptions which its presence 
has called up in his mind. Thus -when I press my hand 
against this table, I recognize its unyieldingness through 
the conjoint medium of my sense of touch, my muscular 
sense, and my mental sense of effort, to which it will be 
convenient to give the general designation of the tactile 
sense; and I attribute to that table a hardness which re¬ 
sists the effort I make to press my hand into its sub¬ 
stance, whilst I also recognize the fact that the force I have 
employed is not sufficient to move its mass. But I press 
my hand against a lump of dough; and finding that its 
substance yields under my pressure, I call it soft. Or 
again, I press my hand against this desk; and I find 
that although I do not thereby change its form, I change 
its place ; and so I get the tactile idea of motion. Again, 
by the impressions received through the same sensorial 
apparatus, when I lift this book in my hand, I am led te 
attach to it the notion of iveight or ponderosity; and by 
lifting different solids of about the same size, I am 
enabled, by the different degrees of exertion I find my¬ 
self obliged to make in order to sustain them, to distin¬ 
guish some of them as light , and others as heavy. 
Through the medium of another set of sense-perceptions 
which some regard as belonging to a different category, 
we distinguish between bodies that feel il hot ” and those- 
that feel “ cold; ” and in this manner we arrive at the 
notion of differences of temperature. And it is through 
the medium of our tactile sense, without any aid from 
vision, that we first gain the idea of solid form, or the 
three dimensions of space. 
Again, by the extension of our tactile experiences, we 
acquire the notion of liquids, as forms of matter yielding 
readily to pressure, but possessing a sensible weight 
which may equal that of solids: and of air, whose re¬ 
sisting power is much slighter, and whose weight is so 
small that it can only be made sensible by artificial 
means. Thus, then, we arrive at the notions of resistance 
and of weight as properties common to all forms of 
matter; and now that we have got rid of that idea of 
light and heat, electricity and magnetism, as “ impon¬ 
derable fluids,” which used to vex our souls in our 
scientific childhood, and of which the popular term 
“ electric fluid ” is a “ survival,” we accept these proper¬ 
ties as affording the practical distinction between the 
“material ” and the “immaterial.” 
Turning, now, to that other great portal of sensation, 
the sight, through which we receive most of the messages. 
