The claims of psychology to a place in the circle of the sciences / sessional address of the President, Mr. Serjeant Cox.

  • Edward William Cox
Date:
[1878]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The claims of psychology to a place in the circle of the sciences / sessional address of the President, Mr. Serjeant Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    does, armedj not with metaphysical abstractions, which only beat the air, but with the substantial and formidable weapon otfact. Let us remember that one fact, however small, will suflB.ce to load the sling that will bring the giant to the earth. It is the business of this Society to search among the phenomena of their Science, not for one only, but for a whole armoury of such facts, each a death to Materialism. Be assured you will find them, if you will only look for them with zeal, with patience, with perseverance, with caution, and with care. But Psychology offers to those who pursue it, in the large and liberal spirit which I have ventured to commend to your favour, a yet higher and holier pleasure. When the conviction has come to him, not by authority and dogma, but by the positive evidence of facts and phenomena, that there is a Soul in Man, the Psychologist learns to see a Soul in Nature. The proofs of it are patent to him. He finds its presence about him everywhere, underlying all substance, explaining many mysteries, solving a multi- tude of problems, wholly insoluble by Materialism. To the Psychologist the Universe wears a new aspect; this world has for him a new meaning; Nature, new teachings; life, a new mission; duty, a loftier aim. He contemplates a nobler present and hopes confidently for a greater future. As he makes that present he knows that so he will mould that future. He asks himself if it b_e^not possible, nay probable, that if there be a Soul in Ma^ and a Soul in Nature—A present DEITY, in pact wjiat is to us the material Universe, constructed, as the Scientists assert, of molecules, may be the surging up, as it were, in those infinitely various material forms, ^t true to a few types, of a Universe of Soul permeat- ing and underlying the molecular structure of which it is only the perceptible embodiment, that is for ever changing its shape but remaining the same in substance still ? For there is no Death in Nature—because there is no [261]