On Wednesday evening at Cambridge Mr. Balfour de- livered his
Presidential address to the annual meeting of the British Association. He chose for his subject "Reflections suggested by the New Theory of Matter," and in a paper marked not only by great dialectical skill but by notable literary eharm discussed the new developments of physics and the changes which they involve in scientific aims. The desire to find some unification for the natural world was shown in the theories relating to ether and electricity, and the quest for that ultimate physical reality whose existence had been formerly denied. In such a quest the old narrow inductive methods became of little value, and natural science was revealed as incapable by itself of providing a coherent ex- planation. He desired to rouse in others the same absorbing interest in these new developments that he felt himself, and added his personal opinion that science must lean more and more upon an idealistic interpretation of the Universe. We have discussed the consequences of this view elsewhere.
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