ABSTRACT OF THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
7 
But does not this lead us to Materialism? I do not think 
that necessarily it does ; but still I am afraid that the arguments 
as against Materialism, drawn from introspective considerations of 
the consciousness, in attempts to isolate it from matter by attributes 
of unity, inextensibility, indivisibility, and solidarity, must be 
considered at present, at any rate, as having the weight of 
evidence against them. One great gain has certainly been attained 
in its being made clear that training is of much greater value than 
scolding in producing right action. 
It used to be a philosophical apothegm, if not originally an 
oracle, that the highest knowledge was " to know that we knew 
nothing," which may have had three meanings. L That as a 
maxim of humility it was a good and wise position to take. 
2. That the common-sense or knowledge of mankind, although a 
sort of knowledge, was usually so powerful that it was only the 
highest intellects that were capable of examining its nature, and 
who then found it so aberrant and unaccountable, that all they 
could say about it was that they only knew that they knew 
nothing. 3. That at the time of its utterance it was perceived 
how much there was to be known, but how little they then knew. 
This maxim has been beaten out perhaps in almost every direc- 
tion to absurdity. Some philosophers have denied that mind 
existed ; some, as Berkeley and the idealists, that matter existed ; 
whilst Hume, who was more consistent, denied the existence of 
either, and affirmed that only a sequence of sensations existed. 
Even Sir W. Hamilton considered that we had no absolute 
knowledge. 
He says, "I virtually assert we know nothing absolute — nothing 
existing absolutely ; that is, in and for itself, and without relation 
to us and our faculties. I shall illustrate this by its application. 
Our knowledge is either of matter or mind. Now what is matter ? 
Matter, or body, is to us the name either of something known, or 
of something unknown. ... In short it is a common name for a 
certain series of appearances manifested in co-existence. 
"But as these phenomena appear only in conjunction, we are 
compelled to think them conjoined in something. But this some- 
thing, absolutely and in itself, is to us as zero. It is only in its 
qualities or effects that it is cognizable. That which manifests 
its qualities is called the substance. To this substance of the 
phenomenon of extension, solidity, &c, the term matter or 
