THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
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molecules came into existence. Such a theory may be held, but 
cannot be proved or disproved. 
The Mechanical School find in the Emergence of Consciousness 
their crux. Buchner and a few of his hardy followers make use 
of some strong phrases to indicate that all that we include under 
the term is the sole and natural product of the bare interaction of 
atoms. " Ohne Phosphor ohne Gedank" is, being only a partial 
truth, intended to imply that Consciousness is the absolute product 
of Matter as truly and in the same sense as bile is a secretion of 
the liver — a conclusion that ignores the essential difference between 
the most elementary form of Consciousness and the atom or its 
motions. To say that atoms by kicking one against the other, and 
so producing motions and concussions and adhesions, produce 
thereby also Thought or Sensation, which are neither atom, nor 
motion, nor interaction of atoms, but something which exhibits 
no single material quality, which lies beyond all material tests, 
affinities, and conceptions, is in reality to represent atomic matter 
as originating something utterly new, something outside the 
material sphere ; it is, in short, to invest atomic matter with 
absolute creative power. Whatever may be urged in favour of 
the mechanical evolution of living organisms regarded as structures 
of matter capable of nutrition, growth, and reproduction, the 
argument utterly breaks down when the origin of Consciousness 
is to be accounted for. 
Although Mr. Spencer's view of the universe is based on 
principles wider in range and more congruous with the facts to be 
solved than what can be affirmed of Materialism, yet among the 
minor considerations that have influenced him in his emphatic 
rejection of it must doubtless be included its utter inadequacy, in 
his judgment, to solve the problem before us. Amidst all his 
fondness for wide and frequent generalization, and in spite of the 
unfortunate complication and obscurity produced by his varying 
use of such terms as "Force" and "Nexus," his main lines of 
thought are clear enough to one who has patience to read his works 
with care. His solution of the problem before us comes out inci- 
dentally in the unfolding of his theory of Evolution. He proceeds 
on ontological lines in his interpretation of the phenomena of the 
universe, which for the purposes of his philosophy he divides into 
two parts — material and psychical. At the back of each, and as 
cause of each, there is one and the same Eternal Eeality. They 
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