•1 
V.. 
The occasion appears to be propitious for the success of 
such an institution. This is not an era which will tolerate 
the dmsion of acroatic^ and exoteric learning, or recognise 
barriers within which the uninitiated are not permitted to en¬ 
croach. ^len are no longer content that the search for know¬ 
ledge should be delegated to the exclusive charge of any par¬ 
ticular body, involved in the frivolous niceties of alchemical 
empiricism, clouding in allegory, or shrouding in mystic 
symbols the steps by which they, as they supposed, approached 
the secrets of the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life, or the 
universal solvent; no longer amused with the acuminated 
subtleties of metaphysical disquisitions, dogmatic theology, 
or philological dissertations. Theories are not now dozed 
over for a life time to pass away as idle dreams. We live in 
an age in which the difficulties which arrested the profound- 
est masters of antiquity—and drew forth desponding lamenta¬ 
tions of the impossibility of their solution, or ambiguous pro- 
pheciesf of the probability of their removal, have been subju¬ 
gated by the ever strengthening arm of science; in which 
tangible realities and practical demonstration, from what order 
soever they emanate, are accepted and appreciated, and in 
which each one who can add to the treasury and enrich it 
with a new idea, or shed a ray of light upon any of the obscu- 
* Aristotle classified his lectures as,—Ist acroamatic, acroatic, or 
esoteric; 2nd, exoteric. The latter, delivered in public, comprised logic, 
rhetoric, politics and economics, <&c. The former to which his select 
disciples alone were admitted, related to the Deity, being nature, &c. 
t Note— Vide Bacon, ESPECiASiLY Nova Atlantis, Magna*Ua Natur®. 
One of the least oracular and most poetical of these is that welUknown 
passage from Dr. Danvin :— 
“ Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam, afar 
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car: 
Or on wide waving wings expanded bear 
The flying chariot through the fields of air. 
Fair crews triumphant leaning from above 
Shall wave their fluttering kerchiefs as they move; 
Or warrior bands alarm tbe gaping crowd 
And armies shrink beneath the shadowy cloud." 
