of Edinhiirgh, Session 1862 - 63 . 
7 
II . — -Rise and Progress of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 
Griiided by an interesting passage in the “ Life of Lord Karnes/’* 
it would appear that the germ of our Society is to be found in the 
Ranhenian Glub^ instituted in Edinburgh in 1716, for literary social 
meetings, and which had the unusual duration (for such associations) 
of almost sixty years. It expired in 1774. It included among its 
original or early members. Principal Wishart, Bishop Horsley, 
Colin Maclaurin, John Stevenson, Professor of Logic, Lord Auch- 
inleck, several of the ministers of Edinburgh and neighbouring 
gentry, and, finally. Sir John Pringle, afterwards President of the 
Koyal Society of London. No publications are known to have pro- 
ceeded from this Club.f 
Contemporary, in part, with the Kankenian Club was a Society 
for the Improvement of Medical Knowledge, instituted in 1731. 
This Society, of which little perhaps is now remembered save its 
published Transactions, appears to have been conducted with an 
enlightened sense of the dignity and importance of associations for 
the promotion of science, which its founders justly considered to be 
more advanced by publishing able papers, than by making a parade 
^ [By Lord Woodhouselee] two vols. 4to. Edin. 1807, vol. i. p. 174, and 
list of members. Appendix p. 50. 
t Since the reading of this address I have been indebted to Professor 
Fraser of the Edinburgh University for a reference to an interesting allusion to 
the “ Kankenian Club,” contained in Dugald Stewart’s First Dissertation on 
the Progress of Metaphysical and Ethical Philosophy, part ii. sect. 4, where 
he speaks of Berkeley’s celebrated system of Idealism having “ attracted very 
powerfully the attention of a set of young men who were then prosecuting 
their studies at Edinburgh, and who formed themselves into a society for the 
express purpose of soliciting from the author an explanation of some parts of 
his theory which seemed to them obscurely or equivocally expressed. To 
this correspondence the amiable and excellent prelate appears to have given 
every encouragement ; and I have been told,” adds Mr Stewart, “ by the best 
authority, that he was accustomed to say that his reasonings had been no- 
where better understood than by this club of young Scotsmen.” To which 
Mr Stewart adds this note : “ The authority I here allude to is that of my 
old friend and preceptor, Dr John Stevenson, who was himself a member of 
the Ranhenian Club ” Mr Fraser justly remarks, that the dates 
tally well with this statement ; Berkeley’s “ Dialogues ” having been published 
in 1713, and the Kankenian Club having (as stated above) been founded in 
1716. 
