214 NATURE AND MAN. 



weakness of deduction ; and determinately reject from our ground- 

 tiers every stone that is not fit to bear the weight of the super- 

 structure we intend to raise upon them. Recognizing it as a fact 

 in the history of human thought, that every great error contains 

 some admixture of truth, from which its power over men's minds 

 is essentially derived, we must so shape our fabric that it shall 

 direct, rather than oppose, the force of the aggressive wave. And 

 then, though our skill may not suffice to give permanence to our 

 weaker superstructure, though our lantern may be shattered and 

 our light may for a time be extinguished, we shall retain a secure 

 basis on which to rebuild our tower, crowning it with a new 

 and more enduring dome, and setting in it a lamp of yet brighter 

 lustre. 



Such, I persuade myself, would have been the mode in which 

 we should have been counselled by the calm wisdom and richly 

 stored historic experience of that illustrious man, whose memory 

 you are now met to honour ; had he lived into these times, and 

 been brought face to face with the problems we have now to 

 meet. Accustomed as I have been from boyhood to hear his 

 name mentioned with affectionate respect, counting some of his 

 descendants among my most valued friends, and not unfamiliar 

 with the general bearing of his historic writings, I cannot be 

 ignorant of the life-long consistency with which he advocated the 

 cause of human freedom and human progress ; of the grave 

 severity with which he reflected on the intolerance of those re- 

 formers, who, while struggling against the absolutism of papal 

 Rome, endeavoured to make themselves scarcely less absolute ; 

 and of the true philosophy and lenient charity with which he 

 attributed that intolerance to the habit ingrained in their nature 

 by their early training, of which it was scarcely in their power to 

 divest themselves. 



And in now inviting your attention to that most important 

 question of practical psychology, — the mode in which our beliefs 

 are formed, and the degree in which we are personally responsible 

 for them, — I am but following a path which he marked out, 

 towards a conclusion in which I persuade myself that he would 

 have concurred. 



Our beliefs must be carefully distinguished from our know- 



