THE PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. / 



are yet to be read on sepulchres of stone. It is not from that distant 

 bourne where the last ray of starlight trembles on the telescopic eye, 

 that man is to receive the great secret of the world's birth, or of his 

 future destiny. It is from the deep vaults to which primeval life has 

 been consigned that the history of the dawn of life is to be com- 

 posed. 



Geologists have read that chronology backwards, and are decipher- 

 ing downward its pale and perishing alphabet. They have reached the 

 embryos of vegetable existence, the probable terminus of the forma- 

 tion that has buried them. But who can tell what sleeps beyond ? 

 The mortal coils of beings more lovely, more pure, more divine than 

 man, may yet read to us the unexpected lesson, that we have not been 

 the first and may not be the last of the intellectual race.*" 



A noble passage — as profound as it is eloquent ! and yet the man 

 who could thus characterize " startling generalization " falls into the 

 same original sin of science. On the most slender grounds, as is well 

 known, he embraced as a certainty, the possibility of the doctrine of 

 "more worlds than one," and stamped the theory of the Planets and 

 Asteroids being inhabited, as "the creed of the Philosopher and the 

 hope of the Christian." His coarse attack on Whewell for daring to 

 doubt this, in the " Plurality of "Worlds," is too well known as a 

 melancholy example of the inveterate habit of theorizing. Those who 

 feel pleasure in seeing such an onslaught well met and' repelled, read 

 with instructed satisfaction the temperate but irresistible answer of 

 the accomplished Master of Trinity. 



A very large class of minds shrink with undisguised dislike from 

 every inquiry which may possibly clash with any firmly established 

 doctrine or theory. This conservative feeling has done good service 

 in its day, and must not be lightly despised, but it must not be pushed 

 beyond legitimate bounds. The Brahmin dashed the microscope to 

 the ground, and cursed the art which shewed him myriads of objects 

 floating in a glass of his daily drink from his sacred Ganges. Our 

 Newton was branded as an Arian heretic for questioning the genuine- 

 ness of the celebrated half verse in St. John's epistle. Few scholars 

 will now-a'-deyr [lo battle for it. We can hardly afford to imitate the 

 judicial blindness of the Brahmin. We must be careful, even in de- 

 fence of things we consider sacred, not to imitate the assailants of 

 Newton. 



• More Worlds than One. 



