THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

[From our London Correspondent.]

The annual meeting of the British Association at Exeter was of more than average interest, and there was a goodly gathering of philosophers in the charming capital of Devonshire. Professor Stokes, of Cambridge, was the President for the year, and his inaugural address was to a great extent devoted to recent discoveries in connection with astronomy.
... If we may hope that "the great problem of the system of the world may be on the point of being unravelled," we shall owe it to the interdependence of the sciences, and the help they are now able to afford to each other. A devout and reverend enquirer in the field of scientific truth, like Professor Stokes, could hardly recount such wondrous discoveries without some reference to " the insoluble.'' What ever light may be thrown upon the material phenomena around us, the limits of our enquiries are sharply confined. "In the various processes of crystallization, of precipitation, and so forth, which we witness in dead matter," said the President in his opening address, " I cannot see the faintest shadow of an approach to the formation of an organic structure, still less to the wonderful series of changes which are concerned in the growth and perpetuation of even the lowliest plant," That mysterious something which we call life is now, as ever, a profound mystery, and the vastness of our knowledge only seems to widen the gulf between matter and mind. Far as we can go, we must yet take much upon trust, and the farther we advance the more inevitable does it seem that we most take refuge in the belief of an intelligent First Cause. " Truth," as Professor Stokes says, "must be self-consistent," and should be pursued without regard to possible consequences, and with a firm faith in the ultimate result.

... others threw fresh light upon the physical aspect of our globe in the remote past, the condition of the human race in pre-historic times, tested Mr. Darwin's theory of natural selection by the aid of newly-discovered phenomena, discussed, without any satisfactory results, the origin of species, or stated their speculative conclusions founded on the contents of bone-caves and fossil remains. One of the most animated discussions took place in the Biological section, where a D.D. and an Archdeacon courageously, if rashly, vindicated the Mosaic account of the creation and were finely roasted by Professor Huxley, who took the opportunity of denying that he was a materialist. This eminent savant is the President elect for next year. His election to the chair of the Association is a significant fact. Professor Huxley holding and avowing also the belief that the processes of scientific enquiry, if strictly pursed, will yield results not consistent with certainty as to the existence of a sentient Final Cause. The Final Cause may be non-sentient, or may not exist —cause being as infinite as effect—or may be—and this is Mr. Huxley's preferent view—so absolutely beyond human ken, so clearly the Unknowable, that to attempt to trace its character, or wishes, or end in the government of the universe is an attempt to resolve a recurring decimal—a useless and perplexing waste of time. It was feared that a President with these pronounced views would injure the Association, and a small section was in favour of ejecting lord Stanley for the meeting which will be held in 1870 at Liverpool ; but His Lordship left Exeter somewhat abruptly, with the intimation that the Association ought to choose for President a man of science instead of a politician, and Professor Huxley was elected without demand. This incident induces the Spectator to refer to the present state of opinion on the question of science and religion in an article, perhaps a little exaggerated in tone, from which the following is a striking extract: —
" All through England, as through all the Continent, the one grand controversy now raging among cultivated men— whose opinion, be it remembered, will be ten years hence the opinion of the people—is whether the Supernatural exists at all; whether every thing is not cause and effect; whether the theory of a sentient First Cause, which is the basis of all we call faith or religion—though it is not the sole possible basis of morals, the dogma that truth is good, falsehood bad, being, for example, as independent of God as it is of man— is not a delusion out of accord with all the facts which, if human reason is to be accepted as a guide at all—as a guide, that is, which we can trust as we trust our senses— must be accepted as true. A new and sovereign desire to get at the bottom of this, as the only real question; to have certainty about it; to believe it or disbelieve it hard ; to frame life on it, is manifesting itself in every stratum of society—manifesting itself very often in a sort of blind fury of enthusiasm. At the same moment, and among the same classes, an equally intense desire is displayed to examine the question through science, through close observation and rigid analysis, and unhesitating recombination of the facts revealed by "Nature," to try the whole subject once for all by the scientific test. So strong is this desire that it pervades those who know nothing of science, till they fancy that if they had but the talisman it would bring water out of the rock; till we see before as a phenomenon absolutely novel, a confidence without reason leading to an unbelief as absolute as the belief which a similar confidence in religion formerly produced —a positive faith in faithlessness. We ask any one who knows English society at all if we exaggerate when we say that there are hundreds of able men in England, who, knowing nothing of science, disbelieve in God, or rather in God's government, because, as they think, science has dispelled that ancient delusion—who refer honestly and confidingly to the "authority" of science exactly as men once referred, and on the Continent women still refer, to the "authority" of the Church, who regard Professors Huxley, Tyndall, and the rest as "Directors'' are supposed to be regarded by faithful Ultramontanes?"

 The South Australian Advertiser 30 October 1869.