PROCEEDINGS. 
393 
supply his wants, which are unlimited, while nature’s provision is 
limited, and the rules which govern this effort. The form which 
economic organization assumes at any time and place depends on 
the abundance of land, labor, and capital. The axioms of the 
theoretical or deductive economist are, that nature’s gifts are 
limited and that the “economic man” seeks the maximum result 
with the minimum effort. The newer inductive or historical 
school of economists concerns itself minutely with the affairs of 
the past as well as the present. 
Mr. E. A. Pace considered Psychology. The subject is now 
in a transition state. The older treatment, based on introspec¬ 
tion, dealt only with mental processes. The newer science has 
three methods or fields of research: it investigates the relations 
between mental and physical phenomena, the development of 
mental life,-and abnormal psychic phenomena. 
Mr. L. F. Ward spoke on Sociology, defining it as the science 
of society or of social phenomena. It is based on the study of 
large groups of men, not of individuals. Tylor’s ethnographic 
parallelisms prove a uniform law of psychic development: pri¬ 
mary wants are the same and are similarly supplied everywhere; 
governments and religions have more in common than in diver¬ 
sity; history is everywhere the same except the names. The 
causes of social phenomena may be grouped as (1) environment 
(climate, nature of country, etc.), and (2) subjective environ¬ 
ment or character. The old doctrine of free will made man a 
lawless being, not a rational one; we now see that the law of 
parsimony runs through all life. 
_ 
550th Meeting. March 29, 1902. 
Vice-President Marvin in the chair. 
Eighteen persons present. 
Mr. Baker presented informally a geometrical problem: If 
one corner of a cube be cut off by an oblique plane the sum of 
the squares of the areas of the three faces adjacent to the corner 
is equal to the square of the area of the opposite side. This can 
be proved analytically but not geometrically; so the speaker 
