It is a custom with that venerable institution, the Aristotelian Society, to elect each year a new President whose duty it is to open proceedings with a Presidential Address. Dr. F. C. S. Schiller, our President for this year, chose as his subject “Novelty,” and endeavoured to prove first and foremost that novelty exists, “or rather occurs.” One wonders whether this was quite necessary, novelty is so very obvious everywhere. But we suppose that it must have been ; and there are at any rate people, known as Eleatics, who are supposed to have denied its existence, though illustrating it by their own. In any case, Dr. Schiller did prove it; if in no other way, by the very fact that a President of the venerable Aristotelian Society should have talked to us about milliners and tailors and the fashion of dressing one’s hair.

He was not quite so successful, however, it seems to me, in establishing his second point, namely, that hatred of novelty exists and is man’s normal attitude. Our President, at any rate, is an exception here again ; and in his philosophic studies has nobly resisted the “inertia, laziness, custom, timidity, stupidity, the whole brood of Habit and Ignorance” which “combine their forces to repulse the new.” He admits that there are exceptions, however ; and mentions as instances the love of novelty in fashion, and the craving for news. Science also has “looked with favour upon novelty in the last century or two.” But this is not enough. Science has not only favoured novelty in the last century or two : it lives upon novelty and always has done so.