Lesley. I ^4 [March 15, 



character bailie our comprehension. In <>iu and the same 

 family the physiologist and psychologist may find — not 

 merely representatives-^hut exaggerations of the different 

 human races: in feature, tendency of affections, modes of 



thought, and lines of practical pursuit. 



A philosophical society like ours, dating far hack — repre- 

 senting in fact the traditions of the middle ages, and the 

 ages beyond them — composed at first of emigrants or the 

 sons of c migrants from every nation in Christendom beyond 

 the seas — established on no narrow or special basis, but con- 

 secrated to the diffusion of useful knowledge as a whole and 

 in all its forms — absorbing into itself all coming tendencies, 

 informations, systematic developments of the ideal and of 

 the practical, like a fertile farm sown every new year with 

 fresh seed and every year yielding a new, fresh harvest — 

 surely such a Society is one of those fair phenomena of 

 Nature over which the poet may sing his most exalted 

 strain, while the philosopher invents for it his freest and 

 finest hopes. 



We celebrate, then, the birthday of a living being, to 

 which a hundred years is but as one year, and which in one 

 year may live an hundred. 



We celebrate the creation of one of those immortal things 

 of this world which have beginning, but which need not 

 have an end. Political dynasties, like families, expire; but 

 scientific societies should be ignorant of the possibility of 

 death. Like ecclesiastical organizations, they recruit their 

 wasting tissues by a, perpetual renovitiation ; but, unlike 

 ecclesiastical organizations, they run no risk of becoming 

 fixed and hard; their tenets can never become effete, for 

 the basis of their life is the old ever being made over new — 

 truth out of truth, a. thousand times re verified, improved, 



