'The British Association for the Advancement of Science met on
Wednesday, at Belfast, when Professor Tyndall, as President for the year, delivered the inaugural address,—a document occu- pying no less than eight closely-printed columns of the Times. The whole was forwarded by telegraph. We have noticed the Main thesis of the address—the probability that Matter is the ultimate soureercif all things, and its own first cause—elsewhere, and need only add here that the lecture, hard as it must have bit some of those present, was heard with an absorbed attention, which, apart altogether from its argument, it well deserved. It is probably the least " dry " address ever delivered before the Association, and contains in a small space a nearly complete history of the European progress of the Atomic philosophy. The Professor's " confession " that he believed Matter, using the word in a very broad sense, to be the ultimate Cause of all, is said to have caused some sensation, but so little as to show that his somewhat fierce demand for freedom for scientific statement was in this country hardly required. It is the right- of political statement which now requires extension, Professor Tyndall will be much less persecuted socially for denying the existence of God than he would be for questioning the value of Monarchy, and may defend Atheists with much less abuse than Communists or oligarchs. English " society " nowadays holds two things to be divine,—Property and the Usual.
