originally intruders upon His people's inheritance, should, in Canaan itself, keep their ancient copy of His laws and maintain their observance of His Passover as a witness to the nations of their vast antiquity just up to the time which He had appointed for the restoration of His people to their own land? And from every hand these are beginning their march to the country of Abraham, Joshua, and David, while the knell of departure is sounding in the ears of Samaritan and Turk.

The CHAIRMAN.-I do not think we should separate without an acknowledgment of the very kind offer that has been made by Mrs. Finn. I feel sure I am speaking on behalf of the Council of the Institute when I say we would do our best to secure that some competent person or persons should inspect these very valuable MSS., or any copies that may be obtained. For my own part I cannot help feeling that very great importance is to be attached to them, whether we have the originals of the dates supposed, or copies. The likelihood, at all events, is that tolerably faithful copies of the earliest are in the hands of the Samaritans, and that lends great interest to them. I am sure we would do our best to make use of the offer of Mrs. Finn.

Our thanks have already been expressed to both the authors of the papers.

Mrs. FINN. Supposing the secular character is the so-called Samaritan script, and the sacred character the Hebrew square, it is just possible that when the Samaritans asked for a copy of the Law of God, that the Jewish priests allowed them to have a copy, not in the sacred script but in the secular script, and in that way they obtained possession of the true copy preserved in the Temple at the time.

The CHAIRMAN.-That is a very probable suggestion, I think.
The Meeting then closed.

ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING.*

DAVID HOWARD, ESQ., D.L., IN THE CHAIR.

The following paper was then read by the author :-

THE CONCEPTION OF THE GREAT REALITY. By SYDNEY T. KLEIN, F.L.S., F.R.A.S.

AT

T the outset we must recognise that when we with our finite senses try to form a conception of the Infinite it necessarily takes the form of a negative, the negative applying to those things of which we have cognizance; we carry our thought to the utmost limit possible with our present knowledge, and when we have come to a standstill we conceive the Infinite to be not that but something further on. As our knowledge increases by small steps, that something further on seems ever to be flying from our grasp by mighty strides. until we are forced to bow our heads and recognise that we are in the presence of, though still not in sight of, the Great Reality. A divine impulse is ever urging us forward to greater conceptions, but shattering our hopes and giving us a feeling of despair if we arrogate to ourselves a greater power of conception than we have knowledge to sustain. We have to approach the study with indeed that feeling of elation which the knowledge of our divine origin wakes within us, giving us a feeling of certainty that our souls are capable in the hereafter to attain to the highest summit of knowledge, but with that humility in the present which makes us acknowledge that he who knows most,

Monday, April 11th, 1904.

knows most how little he knows. In this frame of mind let us now examine our surroundings.

We are living in a world of continuous and multitudinous changes, in fact, without change we could have no cognizance of our surroundings, we should have no consciousness of living; we have become so accustomed to certain sensations that we are apt to take them as facts and scoff at the suggestion that they are non-realities. I propose, however, to show that what we perceive are not realities; and true conception of our surroundings depends upon the knowledge which we can bring to bear to interpret the meaning of these sensations. It is only in response to our conscientious endeavours to form new concepts that knowledge is being daily revealed to us; the more we progress in knowledge the more we see that perception alone without knowledge leads to false concepts, and these in their turn if held dogmatically create fatal obstacles and difficulties to our progress towards the appreciation of both the natural and the supernatural. Let me give you a few examples of this in the natural.

In early times the sun and the stars were seen to revolve round the earth once every day, and, without knowledge of astronomy, this was taken for granted as an absolute fact; later on, however, it was noted that the stars never changed their relative positions; this necessitated a new concept, namely, that they were fixed on the inner surface of a huge globe. This false concept brought other difficulties into play, the question arose as to what was beyond the globe, and also the difficulty that the stars as well as the sun were found to be at such an enormous distance from the earth that their rates of motion were quite inconceivable; even in the case of the sun the motion represented over twenty-five million miles per hour and the apparent motion of the stars was thousands of times faster than light travels. These difficulties were not swept away until by the advance of knowledge, the falsity of conception based only upon appearance was made manifest and it was seen that it was the earth which moved and not the stars; even then, owing to its supposed antagonism to what was stated in the Bible, the new conception was opposed with great bitterness, it being long looked upon and denounced as a sacrilegious

invention.

Our present conception that the earth turns round on its axis once every day and rolls in its orbit round the sun once in every year may be called a reality to our finite senses; but I shall show later on that, except for the finiteness of our senses

and the imperfection of our knowledge, the concept is not a true one-with perfect perception and perfect knowledge there can be no such thing as motion, which is the product of time and space.

Let us now go from our senses of sight to that of touch. If you hold a cannon-ball in your hand, perception by the sense of touch tells you that it is solid and hard, but it is not so in reality except as a concept limited by our finite senses. A fair analogy would be to liken it to a swarm of bees, for we know that it is composed of an immense number of independent atoms which are incessantly darting about and circling round each other at an enormous speed, but never touching. If our touch-perception were sensitive enough we should feel those motions and should not have the sensation of a solid; we have a similar case of limitation in our other senses. We can hear beats up to 15 in a second, but beyond that number they give us the sensation of a continuous sound, as you may see by this instrument (syren). In our sight-perception we also have the same limitation, we can see pulsations of intermittent flashes at the rate of 6 in a second, but beyond that number they give us the sensation of a continuous light; the effect is seen very clearly in making the top of a match red-hot; when stationary or moved slowly, it is a point of light, but move it quicker and it becomes a line of continuous light. If our sight-perception were sensitive enough we could see the darting about of these atoms, and the cannon-ball would take on the appearance of a swarm of bees. We are so accustomed to take everything for granted that it may perhaps startle some of you when I ask you to consider whether we can even assert that we have ever seen matter. Let us turn towards a common object in this room. We catch in our eyes the multitudinous impulses which are reflected from its surfaces under circumstances similar to those in which a cricketer "fields" a ball; he puts his hands in the way of the moving ball and catches it, and knowing the distance of the batsman he recognises, by the hard impact of the ball, that the batsman has strong muscles, but he can gain thereby no idea as to his character. And so it is with objective intuition; we direct our eyes towards an object and catch thereby rays of light reflected from that object, at different angles, and by combining all these directions we recognise form and come to the conclusion that we are looking at, say a chair; the eye also tells us that rays are coming in greater quantity from some parts of it and we know that those parts are polished; the eye again catches rays giving higher or lower frequencies of

vibration and we call that colour; our eyes also tell us that it intercepts certain rays reflected from other objects in the room, and we know that it is not transparent to light; and those are our perceptions of a wooden chair. We know, however, with great precision the relative weights and the forces exerted in the combinations of the atoms composing matter; we know that they vibrate ever quicker and quicker as their temperature rises, and, as the quicker they vibrate the less cohesion they have, so matter passes from the solid into the liquid and thence into the gaseous state as the temperature is raised. Our greatest Physicists are ever working on this subject, and the theory which explains the most and seems to fulfil the conditions under which these atoms act, points to each of these being a vortex in the ether, that subtle medium which, having the properties of a solid of almost infinite elasticity, we know to be universally present, as it is by means of that wonderful elasticity that we are able to receive the light from stars sunk far away in the depths of space. I cannot show you a vortex in the ether, but I can start one of these through the still air of this room, and at a distance of 50 feet you will be able to appreciate it as a considerable force. One of the most interesting and suggestive thoughts follows from the conception of an atom as a vortex in the ether. It can be shown that in a perfect fluid where there is no vortex motion no mechanical action can possibly start it, but where vortex motion once exists no mechanical action can possibly stop it. Under these conditions matter is proved to be a manufactured article, not made by natural physical forces but by some great supernatural power outside the visible universe, and once having been made it can only be destroyed by the action of that same creative force. I shall touch upon this subject later on, when I suggest a new conception of the meaning of Creation; meanwhile, I will only ask you to consider how, owing to our senses being limited by the considerations of time and space, we are surrounded by inconceivables; and yet it is those very inadequate conceptions. which force us to acquire knowledge, the greatest incentive we have to pursue our investigation, as we have seen, is the fact that perception without sufficient knowledge leads us into difficulties. Let me give you two instances of these inconceivables-Infinite space is inconceivable by us, but it is also quite as inconceivable to think of space being limited, and yet one of these two must be true. Again, matter is either composed of atoms of a certain size which cannot be divided, or is infinitely