OPPOSITION 41 



those days that its attractions were at one time 

 potent enough to gather round the University 

 thirty thousand students, who for the sake of learning 

 its teaching were willing to endure a life of the 

 severest hardship. Such a state of feeling is now an 

 archaeological curiosity. The revolt against Aristotle 

 is now some three centuries old. But the mental 

 sciences which were supposed to rest upon his 

 writings have retained some of their ascendancy 

 even till this day, and have only slowly and jealously 

 admitted the rivalry of the growing sciences of 

 observation. The subject is interesting to us, as 

 this undecided state of feeling coloured the ex- 

 periences of this Association at its last Oxford visit, 

 nearly a generation later, in 1860. The warmth 

 of the encounters which then took place have left 

 a vivid impression in the minds of those who are 

 old enough to have witnessed them. That much 

 energy was on that occasion converted into heat may, 

 I think, be inferred from the mutual distance which 

 the two bodies have since maintained. Whereas 

 the visit of 1832 was succeeded by another visit in 

 fifteen years, and the visit of 1847 was succeeded by 

 another visit in thirteen years, the year 1860 was 

 followed by a long and dreary interval of separation, 

 which has only now, after four-and-thirty years, 

 been terminated. It has required the lapse of a 

 generation to draw the curtain of oblivion over those 

 animated scenes. It was popularly supposed that 

 deep divergencies upon questions of religion were the 

 motive force of those high controversies. To some 

 extent that impression was correct. But men do 

 not always discern the motives which are really 

 urging them, and I suspect that in many cases 

 religious apprehensions only masked the resentment 



