The British Association meets this year at Brighton, and Dr.
W. B. Carpenter has been elected President. The main object of his first address-.--a very brilliant one—was to effect a compromise between the men of science and the theologians, partly by showing that science, though it seems so infallible, is dependent on our accurate rendering of phenomena which we may render inaccu- rately—the Ptolemaic astronomy, for example, which is all wrong, being an accurate deduction from the facts visible to Ptolemy—and partly by arguing that the business of science is to ascertain the order of nature, that of theology to seek after its cause. The order of nature is not a sufficient account of its cause. Even as to the order of nature we have no right to assume our absolute certainty, as the law we trust may not be the only or the true explanation of the phenomena we see, may even be subject to inexplicable exception. There is one well-known exception, for instance, to an otherwise universal law,—that of the expan- sion of all bodies by heat. Water, though it expands from 394 degs. upwards to boiling point, and when it passes into steam still expands, expands also downwards from 394 to freezing point. It is still stranger to observe that the addi- tion of a little salt brings water again under the universal law, for sea-water contracts from 394 downwards to freezing point„ Even when laws have been accurately observed, there is no reason for the assumption that they are self-acting. Forces are distinct from phenomena and as important, and the continuous study of forces may-end in the conclusion that the ultimate force is a Mind.
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