40 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



based upon a most venerable antiquity — what could be expectec! 

 in behalf of human progress from such weak renunciation of hu- 

 man privileges 1 " It does move,^^ obstinately persisted the im- 

 mortal Galileo, when priestcraft threw him into an Italian dun- 

 geon for denying that literally the sun " hastened to go down to 

 his place," for asserting the daily and annual revolution of the 

 earth. Even in our day, when conventional opinion is yet open 

 to a wider freedom, a more charitable liberalism to every newly 

 demonstrated fact ; there are yet a few who have not bowed the 

 knee to Mammon or cried " Great is Diana of the Ephesians," 

 men who would dare the gloom of a prison rather than yield upon 

 any department of human investigation their opinions to authority^ 

 or waive their inalienable human birthright of freedom of thought 

 and speech, those social, intellectual and moral rights, which, 

 while they contend for as their own, they would extend free as 

 the viewless winds to all mankind irrespective of creed and race. 

 These are men to whom true science is that element in which they 

 " live, move and have their being" — men whose object is truthy 

 fearless of the results of its diffusion — men who trace degradation 

 stamped on the spirit of that slave who is too idle or too fearful 

 to rejoice in the onward spirit of enquiry — who cannot perceive 

 in it the element and source of every fresh acquisition in the path 

 of progress, who dare not examine the current opinions of his age 

 and nation ; branding as idle curiosity, useless speculation, or it 

 may be irreverent restlessness, the efforts of those who would ex- 

 tend the boundaries of human knowledge, and throw down the 

 barriers which thus far have reflected back its rays upon only the 

 privileged few. 



Let us rejoice that we live in this latter and better age. For- 

 merly, partly from mistaken fear as to the consequences of its dif- 

 fusion, but more from an ungenerous, exclusive and, tyrannical 

 wish to fetter the human mind, and that, because ignorant masses 

 are the most subservient slaves of every political despotism, the 

 simplest truths were veiled in studied obscurity. Ignorant of the 

 grand and glorious truth that education is the mainstay of that 

 government which ought to be exercised over human beings 

 regarded as free, the policy of past ages has characteristically 



