Sessional address of the President (Mr. Serjeant Cox), November 4th, 1875.

  • Cox, Edward W. (Edward William), 1809-1879.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sessional address of the President (Mr. Serjeant Cox), November 4th, 1875. 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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    viction that Psychology is a science as real and sub- stantial as Physiology or Biology; that it is not, as its opponents aver, a vague and visionary pursuit, dealing only with cobwebs of the brain, having no foundation in facts and not to be proved by observation and experiment. We had, all of us, the most confident conviction that Psy- chology is as solid and real a Science as are any of the Physical Sciences; that it is to be pursued by the same processes and with equal reliance upon the results of investi- gations into actual phenomena, instead of the metaphysical abstractions and the delusive study of the inner conscious- ness, by which its progress has been impeded hitherto. We had, also, a profound conviction that Psychology had been lately growing in the estimation of the public, who were beginniug to perceive its important beai’ings upon the past, the present, and the future of the human race. The fact was patent to all who mingled with educated society that the uninquiring faith which had induced the almost universal acceptance of the existence and im- mortality of Soul as an indisputable truth was being widely disturbed by the doctrines of materialism, which professed to show by scientific evidence that this faith was not justified—that Soul was a dream or a dogma merely. There had long been plainly visible to all who looked behind the scenes of society a painful disturbance of mind that induced among the thought- ful an anxious desire to find some gleam of hope somewhere, some path that might conduct to a determination of the painful doubts that oppressed them. Psychology opened to them this prospect. Psy- chology recognises at least the possibility of some mechanism of Man other than the material structure, and it proposes for its mission to inquire if there be in fact any such non-corporeal being, and, if it be, what are its nature and characteristics? This is the cause of the vastly increased interest in this once neglected science that has shown itself