26 ADDRESS DELIVERED AT ANNUAL MEETING.
larger conception that it is true of all possible triangles, and
further still that the truth lies in the very nature of a triangle.
Such is the irony of fate that we really never really under-
stand the case of the particular triangle, until we have grasped
the idea (in the Platonic sense) of all triangles.
Now if this is true in the simplest forms of study, it is yet
more true in the recondite. The ordinary definition of the ideal
is "that which is not real"—which is true—but what do we mean
by the real; is not the ordinary sense of the word "real" a
warning of how easy it is to confine our ideas to the particular
example and lose the sense of the wider truth which underlies
the particular example.
The word "real," that modern outcome of scholastic
thought, if it means anything, means that which is "res," a
definite concrete thing, and our use of it to connote the true, the
"very" to use the good old word, is itself a warning how much
our thought is bound down to the particular example that we
know, and how apt we are to lose the sense of the wider truth,
that we at best but half know and but half comprehend, but
which is far truer than the real.
Are we not in danger of being caught in the meshes of our
own thought. Even the wisest and best theory may be a trap,
if we fail to recognise that it must be an imperfect explanation of
the whole of the truth, unknown and unknowable in the fullest
sense. We feel that the theory is "real," it is clear, definite and
conclusive and exactly suits our power of comprehension; there-
fore let us beware of supposing that it is exhaustive. Nature is
greater than our minds, and therefore if a theory is no greater
than our minds, it must be smaller than the truth of nature.
Just in proportion as a theory satisfies us, it bears upon it the
evidence of incompleteness ; and if we do not take care we may
become hide-bound by it. Lavoisier's theory of the proportionate
combination of elements : Dalton's theory of atoms : were
magnificent and have borne fruit in much of the wonderful pro-
gress of modern science ; and yet in their very perfection, they
left out a something that the older phlogiston theory, erroneous
and imperfect as it was, had got a glimpse of. Even their very
success threw back the investigation of "thermochemistry"
which is not less important to the grasp of the whole problem.
Only a few years ago we were tempted to feel satisfaction in our