THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
277 
of Continuity, and the law of Life from Life — scientific doctrines, 
are adhered to in the first emergence of Life. 
Such an hypothesis as this is certainly so far valuable in that it 
adheres to the two admitted scientific doctrines, and also is in 
harmony with the impression given by vital phenomena, that in 
what we call Life there is something beyond the mere mole- 
cular co-ordination and mechanical interaction — a co-ordinating 
strategist. 
Hitherto I have spoken only of Life. It now remains to say a 
few words in reference to the emergence of Consciousness. The 
two are intimately connected, and it will depend largely on the 
views we entertain concerning their connection, as to the explana- 
tion possible of the origin of Consciousness. The term Conscious- 
ness is very ambiguous. As used by Sir William Hamilton, it 
refers to the knowledge we have, that the Ego exists in some 
determinate state, 1 It is, he says, strictly undefinable ; whereas 
his predecessor, Reid, 2 employed it in the sense of a faculty which 
had internal states for its object. With most modern Psychologists 
it is taken as the ultimate appeal as to the existence of a state of 
mind or the reality of an object, and it is even now and then used 
as the equivalent of assured personality. On the other hand, Kant 
regarded it as the phenomenal form of that noumenon which is 
the undiscernible unity of all we know in mind. If at the present 
time we were concerned only with Consciousness as thus under- 
stood in certain schools of Psychology and Philosophy, we should 
have only to study human beings, and ascertain the conditions and 
causes of the emergence of Consciousness so understood in them. 
But using the term in its relation to Life, in the widest sense of 
the word " Life," our definition or description of it must be of 
wider range. If Life be regarded simply as the Organic in contra- 
distinction from the Inorganic, then, in contradistinction from Life, 
Consciousness must embrace all that comes under the name of 
" Sensation " or " Feeling/' in whatever degree it exist, and whether 
in the highest or the lowest of the Animal Kingdom. No doubt 
it would be easier, for purposes of scientific and popular treatment, 
to deal with the striking contrasts apparent between organic 
structures as living things capable of growth, nutrition, and repro- 
duction, and what is known as human Consciousness ; but that 
1 Metaphysics, i. pp. 182-191. 
2 Works (Hamilton's Ed.), pp. 222-442. 
