206 



So far as we insulate any portion of Truth from tlie rest, by an exclu- 

 sive devotion to its pursuit (and there can be no doubt that such exclu- 

 siveness tends to insulation,) so far we mutilate the fair proportions of 

 Truth itself, and injure and impair the Philosophic Spirit, whose vital 

 power should animate and pervade the whole. And the injury, great 

 as it is, does not end here. There is an evil partaking of a Moral nature 

 obviously springing from this exclusiveness, and which unhappily we see 

 too often realized, unless where some counteracting power is brought 

 in to check it. I mean its effect in narrowing our views, in rendering 

 us bigots in Philosophy, and in causing us to undervalue that which we 

 do not understand. 



*' Now, the mixed constitution of our Society has a manifest ten- 

 dency to overcome, or, at least, to mitigate, these evils. I do not mean 

 to say that these evils, and these means of combatting them, were dis- 

 tinctly perceived by the first founders of this Body. It is an humbling 

 lesson, that Human Institutions, in which we have learned to find 

 wisdom, have often had their origin in circumstance, and their growth 

 amid the adjustments of conflicting interests. The plan of this 

 Academy took its rise, I believe, in the union of two small Societies, call- 

 ing themselves the Palceosophers and the Neosophers, starting originally 

 from opposite extremities of the field of Truth. But, whatever may have 

 been its origin, we may now derive from it lessons not only of mutual 

 forbearance, but of mutual instruction. The Mathematician may imbibe 

 from the Antiquarian the taste which will lead him to explore, with reve- 

 rence, the early history of the efforts of those master-minds in Science, 

 whose very failures are fraught with philosophic interest, and to trace 

 the progress of discovery up to the first dawn of thought ; and he will 

 return from the investigation with clearer views of the Human Mind 

 itself, and of the means by which it attains Truth. The Antiquarian 

 may learn from the man of Science those habits of prejcise thought, and 

 exact reasoning, which, in the mysterious twilight that surrounds the 

 fascinating objects of his pursuit, he is apt to think inapplicable ; and 

 both may learn from the cultivator of Literature to value and to acquire 

 that magic power which Language confers upon Thought. 



" Having said thus much in vindication of the constitution of the 

 Academy, suffer me, in the next place, to consider how far it has been 



