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So far as we insulate any portion of Truth from the rest, by an exclu- 
sive devotion to its pursuit (and there can be no doubt that such exclu- 
siveness tends to insulation,) so far we mutilate the fair proportions of 
Truth itself, and injure and impair the Philosophie Spirit, whose vital 
power should animate and pervade the whole. And the injury, great 
as it is, does not end here. There is an evil partaking of a Moral nature 
obviously springing from this exclusiveness, and which unhappily we see 
too often realized, unless where some counteracting power is brought 
in to check it. I mean its effect in narrowing our views, in rendering 
us bigots in Philosophy, and in causing us to undervalue that which we 
do not understand. ‘ 
“‘ Now, the mixed constitution of our Society has a manifest ten- 
dency to overcome, or, at least, to mitigate, these evils. I do not mean 
to say that these evils, and these means of combatting them, were dis- 
tinctly perceived by the first founders of this Body. It is an humbling 
lesson, that Human Institutions, in which we have learned to find 
wisdom, have often had their origin in circumstance, and their growth 
amid the adjustments of conflicting interests. The plan of this 
Academy took its rise, I believe, in the union of two small Societies, call- 
ing themselves the Palwosophers and the Neosophers, starting originally 
from opposite extremities of the field of Truth. But, whatever may have 
been its origin, we may now derive from it lessons not only of mutual 
forbearance, but of mutual instruction. The Mathematician may imbibe 
from the Antiquarian the taste which will lead him to explore, with reve- 
rence, the early history of the efforts of those master-minds in Science, 
whose very failures are fraught with philosophic interest, and to trace 
the progress of discovery up to the first dawn of thought; and he will 
return from the investigation with clearer views of the Human Mind 
itself, and of the means by which it attains Truth. The Antiquarian 
may Jearn from the man of Science those habits of precise thought, and 
exact reasoning, which, in the mysterious twilight that surrounds the 
fascinating objects of his pursuit, he is apt to think inapplicable; and 
both may learn from the cultivator of Literature to value and to acquire 
that magic power which Language confers upon Thought. 
“‘ Having said thus much in vindication of the constitution of the 
Academy, suffer me, in the next place, to consider how far it has been 
