234 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
We need have no misgivings as to the worthiness of the pursuits 
to which this Society is devoted. To search after truth, to strive, 
as “ the minister and interpreter of Nature,” not only to discover 
all her facts but to elicit their meaning, to educe the principles 
which underlie them, and to arrive at the apprehension of the laws 
which they obey, — 
“ Und was in schwankenden Erscheinung schwebt 
Befestigen mit dauerden Gedanken”* — 
is an occupation than which none can be more noble, more worthy of 
the faculties with which we have been endowed, or more pleasing to 
Him by whom these faculties have been conferred, — for He Himself 
is Truth; and in proportion as men with sincerity and earnestness seek 
after truth, in that proportion do they put on the similitude of God 
and come into sympathy with Him. The visible universe, moreover, 
is as Goethe has expressed it, “ Der Gottheit lebendiger Kleid” (the 
living mantle of the Deity) ; and by it He, who is himself invisible, 
reveals himself to us, making known to us, as the apostle tells us, 
by the things that are made his eternal power and Godhead (Rom. 
i. 20). Philosophy, if it follow its normal tendency, leads up to 
God ; for the progress of all true philosophic thought is from the 
many to the one, from facts to principles, from the relative to 
the absolute, from phenomena to essence ; and it is illegitimately 
arrested in its proper course, and defrauded of its proper issue, if 
it be stopped short of the Supreme Essence in whose infinite mind 
are the archeal types of all existences — “ the forms eternal of 
created things.” Nor is the value of literary and scientific study 
as a moral discipline to be overlooked. To those engaged in such 
pursuits there arises an influence which, like some subtle essence, 
pervades their whole inner nature, and unconsciously, perhaps, to 
themselves elevates, purifies, and refines it. The study of philo- 
sophy, of literature, and of science thus becomes a great moral 
therapeutic, an instrument of spiritual culture : — “ Animum format 
et fabricat, vitam disponit, actiones regit, agenda et omittenda 
demonstrat, sedit ad gubernacubum et per ancipitia fluctuentium 
dirigit cursum.”f 
“ The true philosopher (I use the words of Sir Humphry Davy) 
sees good in all the diversified forms of the external world. Whilst 
*- Goethe, Faust, Prol. t Seneca, Ep. xvi. 
