time ; and I regret that something has not been said more directly showing 
wherein the decline of modern thought is to be noted. In our modern 
schools we find some attempt made to teach the classics, but nothing seems 
to be done with the view of turning the wisdom of our ancestors to practical 
account. Everything in the way of education nowadays is “ cram,” and as 
soon as a student has been “ crammed ” sufficiently to enable him to “ Pass 
an Exam,” he goes out into the world and there is no further effort to 
cultivate thought. This is one of the things that require attention ; for, 
in these days, when everything is measured by its immediate return, there 
is great danger in neglecting the culture of intellectual thought, 
Mr. F. Wright. — I was sorry to hear the last speaker refer to what he 
termed the dishonesty of many of our professors of science. During the last 
twenty years I have made myself familiar with pretty nearly all that has 
been written by Professor Huxley and Professor Tyndall, and nearly all 
that Professor Beale has written, and I am bound in common candour and 
fairness to say I have never yet detected dishonesty in any of these 
writers. We need not go so far for an explanation of the defects which 
have been so admirably pointed out by Professor Beale. I must admit 
that I have never seen those defects made to appear so flagrant, or so 
mercilessly dealt with as they have been to-night. I am willing to own 
that with respect to some of the points that have been dealt with I should 
like to re-consider my views but, subject to this, I wish to place before 
the meeting one or two considerations in bar of the broad conclusion 
Professor Beale has invited us to accept. His broad conclusion is that the 
evidence in respect, of the development of materialistic ideas is evidence of 
the decline of thought. Now, I do not think it gives any such evidence. 
First of all, I put it to you that he has brought before us only one aspect of 
thought, and has confined himself to one set of men. If we take a wider 
view, the matter assumes a less serious aspect, and we see that what these 
men have done in this respect may be looked on, if compared with the 
general work they have done in other departments of science, as little 
more than a diversion or amusement.* Both the names cited here to-night 
are those of men who have done honour to science, and the memory of 
whose work will live for centuries after the idle dreams which we ha ve 
heard exposed are forgotten ; but what these gentlemen have done,— 
these great contributors to the intellectual movement of the present age, — is 
that, along with their laborious endeavours in the pursuit of important 
scientific truths, they have placed before the reading public, as if they were 
established theories, what cannot and ought not to be deemed anything 
more than idle, dreamy hypotheses, and mere starting-points for further 
inquiry. (Hear, hear.) This is the great fault of the present day, and it 
* But one often involving most serious issues, and then all the more open 
to criticism as coming from writers of such position and influence. — Ed. 
