PROCEEDINGS OF THE MEETING. XXIX 



to deny,) that all truth has one common essence, and should 

 he then go on to ask why truths of different degrees should be 

 thus dissevered from each other, the reply would not be dif- 

 ficult. In physical truth, whatever may be our difference of 

 opinion, there is an ultimate appeal to experiment and ob- 

 servation, against which passion and prejudice have not a 

 single plea to urge. But in moral and political reasoning, we 

 have ever to do with questions, in which the waywardness of 

 man's will and the turbulence of man's passions are among the 

 strongest elements. The consequence it is not for me to tell. 

 Look around you, and you will then see the whole framework 

 of society put in movement by the worst passions of our na- 

 ture; you will see love turned into hate, deliberation into dis- 

 cord, and men, instead of mitigating the evils which are about 

 them, tearing and mangling each other, and deforming the 

 moral aspect of the world. And let not the Members of the 

 Association indulge a fancy, that they are themselves exempt 

 from the common evils of humanity. There is that within us, 

 which, if put into a flame, may consume our whole fabric, — 

 may produce an explosion, capable at once of destroying all 

 the principles by which we are held together, and of dissi- 

 pating our body in the air. Our Meetings have been essen- 

 tially harmonious, only because we have kept within our proper 

 boundaries, confined ourselves to the laws of nature, and 

 steered clear of all questions in the decision of which bad 

 passions could have any play. But if we transgress our pro- 

 per boundaries, go into provinces not belonging to us, and open 

 a door of communication with the dreary wild of politics, that 

 instant will the foul Daemon of discord find his way into our 

 Eden of Philosophy. 



" In every condition of society there is some bright spot on 

 which the eye loves to rest. In the turbulent republics of 

 ancient Greece, where men seemed in an almost ceaseless war- 

 fare of mind and'body, they had their seasons of solemnity, when 

 hostile nations made a truce with their bitter feelings, as- 

 sembled together, for a time, in harmony, and joined in a great 

 festival ; which, however differing from what we now see in 

 its magnitude and forms of celebration, was consecrated, like 

 our present Meeting, to the honour of national genius. What- 

 ever have been the bitter feelings which have so often disgraced 

 the civil history of mankind, I dare to hope that they will never 

 find their resting-place within the threshold where this Associa- 

 tion meets ; that peace and good will, though banished from 

 every other corner of the land, will ever find an honoured seat 

 amongst us ; and that the congregated philosophers of the 

 empire, throwing aside bad passion and party animosity, will, 



