286 REPORTS. 
BIRMINGHAM PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.—The annual meeting of 
the members of this society was held on Thursday, October 10th, in the Board 
Room of King Edward’s Grammar School, Birmingham. Dr. Heslop (the 
president) presided. The Rev. H. W. Crosskey (one of the hon. secs.) read the 
annual report, which stated that the number of members was118. During the 
year there had been three withdrawals and twenty-four new elections, 
Dr. Heslop was re-elected President. The other officers having been 
elected, Dr. Heslop delivered the annual address. He proposed to ask 
their attention that evening to the life and poems of Lucretius. The sum 
of Lucretian philosophy was that all things sprang spontaneously from 
matter, and that out of the concourse of atoms, their varied motions and com- 
binations, all the phenomena of nature arose; that the mind, soul, and body 
came into existence, developed, and died together; that the sum of things was 
fixed; that by infinite adaptations ever going on some things disappeared, or 
rather were restored again into the primal elements, while other things 
came into existence and maintained themselves; that there might be gods 
dwelling in the upper ether, but that providence was not their function, 
the universe being self-dependent. Finally, that the laws of nature were 
eternal and inviolable, the monsters and chimeras of mythology being idle 
tales, and that the punishments fabled to be in store for us in a place 
of torment “do all exist for us in this life.” Lucretius had no conception, or 
but the dimmest conception, of those forces which play so great a part in 
modern science, much less of their relations to each other. He ascribed far too 
serious a part to the fear of death as a motive influence on man’s mind ; and he 
seemed to be unaware, as many modern writers on the same subject seem to 
be unaware, that the views of death held by persons in their health and strength 
are very different from those held by the same persons whea afflicted by pain, 
disease, or moral suffering. Especially Lucretius exaggerated fear of the gods 
and of death as the chief basis of the religions emotions. He was apparently 
unconscious that these emotions are intertwined with our nature under all 
conditions of human life, altogether irrespective of the origin to which he 
ascribed them. The most ardent faith in the existence of a supreme First 
Cause, and of our dependence on that Being, was able to exist in the same 
breast which knew no fear of death. The greatest fault of Lucretius was his 
confidence in his theories, as offering complete solutions of the problems of life 
and nature. When he left the mysteries of matter, motion, and death, Lucretius 
planted his foot on surer ground. There they were free to admire 
a descriptive power, an insight into nature, a vigorous handling of 
man, life, and society, not equalled by any ancient author excepting 
Homer. Lucretius loved to think of nature as free from the dominion of 
her proud lords; he loved to think of men as free from degrading superstitions. 
Yet even he was obliged to admit that the first beginnings of things swerved, 
though ever so little, from their lines of motion, and so made the phenomena of 
the world possible. He admitted that varied deities dwelt in the bright ether, 
above the gliding signs of Heaven, though he refused to believe in their power or 
their desire to influence the course of nature. He saw as intensely as the most 
orthodox béliever, that when men deviated from justice, gave themselves up te 
ambition, or yielded to their passions, the conscience was able to punish them 
with a severity equal to that inflicted on the fabled tenants of Tartarus; yet he 
did not admit that this inner monitor reposed on any external sanctions. 
This, then; was the compromise effected, doubtless after painful struggles 
and much thought, in the mind of Lucretius between the popular religion of his 
day and his knowledge of the facts of life and nature. It was not for them to say 
whether his standpoint was correect—whether the reconciliation he arrived at 
between the sensuous and the supersensuous was a logical reconciliation. If it 
was correct for him, they were precluded from denying its validity. The con- 
science of each investigator was his only court of appeal. If a man’s conscieuce 
was to be his guide and his strength, it could only be strong and helpful when it 
was kept in constant work. It was probable that the exercise of external authority 
over it might yield a crop of hypocrisy ; it was impossible that it could give a 
stock of strength. Here, to dominate was sooner or later to drown. An eminent 
scholar, educated in the school in which they were assembled, lately told a 
notable congregation in Westminster Abbey that ‘“ every fact which is added to 
our knowledge of man or of the world illuminates our knowledge of God.” This 
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