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 University of California 
 
 FROM THK J.IUR.AKY c>F 
 
 DR. FRANCIS LIKBER, 
 rr..fos>ur ,f ilish.ry and Lu-.v in C..I,mibia College. Now York. 
 
 T1IK (iiKT or 
 
 MICHAEL REESE, 
 
 \f Xan Francisco. 
 L 8 7 3 . 
 
ADDRESSES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NEWLY-APPOINTED PROFESSORS 
 
 OF 
 
 COLUMBIA COLLEGE, 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 
 
 BY WILLIAM BETTS, LL.D 
 
 FEBRUARY, 1858. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 BY AUTHORITY OF THE TRUSTEES 
 
 1858. 
 
. HALLENBEOK & THOMAS, PRINTERS, 
 No. 113 Fulton street, New York. 
 
RESOLUTIONS OF THE TRUSTEES. 
 
 AT a meeting of the Trustees of Columbia College, held on the 22d of 
 June, 1357: 
 
 Resolved, That it be referred to a committee of three, of which the Presi 
 dent shall be Chairman, to make such arrangements as they may deem expedi 
 ent in reference to the inauguration of the newly-appointed Professors at the 
 opening of the next College Course. 
 
 The President, the Rev. Dr. Spring, and the Rev. Dr. Haight were 
 appointed the Committee. 
 
 Mr. Jones and Mr. Zabriskie were subsequently added to the Com 
 mittee. 
 
 On the 17th September, 1857, the Committee made a Report, and it 
 was 
 
 Resolved, That the Chairman of the Committee on the Course be requested 
 to prepare the address of the Trustees, mentioned therein. 
 
 At a meeting of the Trustees of the College, held on the 1st of March, 
 1858, it was 
 
 Resolved, That the Chairman of the Committee on the Course, and the 
 several Professors, be requested to furnish copies of the addresses lately 
 delivered by them, and that the same be printed and published under the 
 direction of the Committee. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS, 
 
 WILLIAM BEITS, LL. D., 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 
 
 CHARLES A. JOY, PH. D., . . . . . . .29 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 
 
 FRANCIS LIEBER, LL. D., 55 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 
 
 CHARLES DAVIES, LL. D., . > . . . . .117 
 
 INAUGURAL DISCOURSE, 
 
 CHARLES MURRAY NAIRNE, M. A., . . . , .153 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 
 
 COLUMBIA COLLEGE, 
 
 BY WILLIAM BETTS, LL. D., 
 
 February, 1858. 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
 
 BEFORE the several professors, who have lately 
 assumed chairs of instruction in Columbia College, 
 shall address themselves to you, the Trustees have 
 thought it fitting, on their own behalf, to offer a 
 few preliminary remarks. The principal object of 
 our meeting at this time is, the introduction to the 
 public of those learned gentlemen. On ordinary 
 occasions, this introduction is made by means of an 
 Inaugural Discourse, delivered by the incumbent, on 
 commencing the functions of his office ; and it seldom 
 happens that more than** a single individual, at any 
 one time, is called upon to perform the duty. We 
 have now, however, to celebrate no common inaugu 
 ration. Several individuals are about to lay before 
 you their views and the objects of their teaching in 
 the various departments committed to them ; and 
 this, under circumstances of deep interest, and pecu 
 liar importance. The rapid progress of events, for a 
 few past years, has operated powerfully upon the 
 College, and wrought a mighty change in its pros 
 pects and designs. Those events have pushed from 
 
2 MR. BETTS ADDRESS. 
 
 its foundations the old fabric of the College, and 
 swept away every trace of its material existence. 
 This revolution was attended with adequate compen 
 sation. An accession to its means came with its 
 change of position ; and that brought with it an 
 accession of responsibility. This is not just the time 
 to enlarge on the character of that responsibility, or 
 of the mode in which it affected the minds of the 
 Trustees. It is enough, at this moment, to say, that 
 they felt it, and they acted upon it ; they wish that 
 the Public should know that they did feel it, and that 
 they did act upon it ; and, with this view, they have 
 directed, in connection with the present celebration, 
 to use their own words, " An Address to be pre 
 pared from the Trustees, setting forth, clearly and 
 fully, the history of the recent changes in and 
 enlargement of the course of studies ; and their pur 
 poses and hopes in regard to their future operations." 
 The Trustees having thought fit to select one of their 
 own number for the performance of that duty ; and 
 having committed it to him who now speaks to 
 you, he will proceed to discharge it, with as much 
 brevity as is consistent with its faithful perform 
 ance. 
 
 The prominent object before the Public, undoubt 
 edly, is the removal of the College, and its position 
 in its present locality. The considerations and motives 
 
MR. BETTS ADDRESS. 
 
 which preceded that removal, the hopes which at 
 tend, and the completed designs which may follow it, 
 are not so apparent to them ; and, in making a sketch 
 of the late changes, it may not be unfitting to refer 
 briefly to the recent removal of the Institution from 
 its former grounds. 
 
 Undoubtedly this removal is attended with painful 
 recollections, as well as pleasing anticipations. At 
 the time the old building was erected, one hundred 
 years ago, it stood in the midst of pleasant fields, on 
 the banks of the lordly Hudson. Tranquillity and 
 silence were around it. The groves of the Academy 
 were removed from the strife of trade, and the tu 
 mult of the forum ; the life of contemplation was not 
 brought breast to breast with the life of action, but 
 each pursued, apart, its own appropriate course : and 
 the students, while they daily, in their silken gowns 
 and tasselled caps, proceeded to the isolated halls of 
 their venerated mother, felt themselves a distinct and 
 peculiar class. The conviction rested upon them, 1 
 although it might find no definite embodiment either 
 in idea or expression, that their quiet and modest 
 occupation was one of high import ; that their daily 
 intercourse with the spirits of the great men, whose 
 intellect had illuminated the world, was fitting them 
 for high intercourse thereafter ; and that they were 
 
MR. BETTS ADDRESS. 
 
 becoming qualified to be the leaders and benefactors 
 of mankind. 
 
 The progress of trade soon filled those fields with 
 habitations, and removed from the shore of the Col 
 lege lawn the ripples of the gentle river. The 
 Academic caps disappeared from the brows of the 
 youthful wearers; and houses, and ware-rooms, and 
 streets crowded around, and stretched onwards, and 
 pressed upon the College precincts, until the voice of 
 learning was almost stifled by the clamor of business ; 
 its atmosphere mingled with the atmosphere of trade; 
 its objects began to be regarded as of secondary im 
 port ; and the halls of study lost that calm repose, 
 without which study can never be profitably pro 
 secuted. 
 
 Although, for some years before the removal took 
 place, it became evident that it must occur at no dis 
 tant period, its actual removal was yet made sooner 
 than it was expected. The opening of a new street, 
 directly in front of the building, taking from it all 
 retirement and privacy, and the current of trade, 
 which poured steadily just in that direction, forced it 
 to retreat. The old recollections which clustered 
 around it, of early friendships, and joyous sports, and 
 youthful aspirations, were banished with regret ; the 
 old associations connected with the halls, and the Lec 
 ture rooms, and the honored faculty, and even the 
 
MR. BEITS ADDRESS. 
 
 neglected discipline, with pain were broken. It was 
 painful, but it was proper ; and the Government of 
 the College did not hesitate to do it. They had not 
 waited for the last moment, but had already taken 
 such measures as were fitting for the occasion ; and 
 when the event took place, they were, so far as it was 
 in their power to be so, prepared for it. It was an 
 ticipated that the same circumstances which com 
 pelled the removal of the College would eventually 
 enlarge its income. It could not be known when, or 
 to what extent, this enlargement would take place ; 
 nor what amount of expenditures might become need 
 ful ; but it was plain that, after all expenditures, there 
 would yet be an accession to its means. The College 
 felt that it was incumbent on it to improve, if pos 
 sible, the quality of its usefulness, and certainly its 
 quantity ; and it took timely measures to provide for 
 every possible contingency. 
 
 The property of the College, it is generally known, 
 is composed of the noble donation, by Trinity Church, 
 of the tract on which the fabric lately stood ; and of 
 another tract of land, the gift of the State, formerly 
 known as the Botanic Garden, near the position of 
 the present College. 
 
 The first grant was made u to aid in founding, erect 
 ing and establishing a college, and promoting the 
 education of youth in the liberal arts and sciences ; 
 
6 MR. BETTS ADDRESS. 
 
 and was upon the condition that the President should 
 be in communion with the English Church, and that 
 certain prayers should be used in the daily service of 
 the chapel. This grant forms the principal part of 
 the active property of the College. Large sums have 
 lately been received from the sale of a portion of the 
 property. A considerable amount of the avails of 
 those sales is required for adequately establishing the 
 institution in the upper part of the city, and for put 
 ting the State grant in a condition to produce a reve 
 nue. The accommodations now in use for instruction 
 are intended to be temporary. The outlay made in 
 preparing them for use has much exceeded what was 
 intended ; a heavy expenditure has been incurred in 
 regulating the Botanic Garden, from which an essen 
 tial part of the future revenue of the College is ex 
 pected to be derived ; this expenditure has absorbed 
 large sums received from the sales of the real estate ; 
 and great prudence and economy are necessary to 
 secure the advantages of education, at which the Trus 
 tees most anxiously are aiming. These observations, 
 respecting the means of the College, are not precisely 
 in the chronological order in which they should be in 
 relation to the changes made ; but, inasmuch as they 
 form the basis upon which the other measures are to 
 be constructed, they are here introduced, that the con 
 nection of its action, on those measures, may not be 
 
MR. BETTS ADDEESS. 7 
 
 broken. You will observe, therefore, that when the 
 Trustees of the College began to move in this matter, 
 they knew that very large expenses must be incurred 
 both in the construction of the buildings and in the 
 regulation of the State grounds ; they knew that the 
 expenses of regulating the land would eventually be 
 paid by the land itself; but they did not know when 
 they might expect revenue from it ; they did not know 
 how much the portion of the church property to be 
 sold would produce ; they knew that, upon the whole, 
 there would be an increase of revenue, but they could 
 not anticipate its amount, or the time at which it 
 would take place ; and therefore it became material 
 that any plan of enlarged operations should admit of 
 expansion in proportion to the means to be acquired. 
 Actuated by these considerations, the Trustees, on 
 the third day of October, 1853, appointed a commit 
 tee, who were instructed " to inquire whether it was 
 expedient to take any and what measures, for the 
 removal of the College ; and, in the event of such 
 removal, whether any and what changes ought to be 
 made in the under-graduate course ; and whether it 
 would be expedient to establish a system of univers 
 ity education, in addition to such under-graduate 
 course, either in continuation thereof or otherwise; 
 and that they should report fully as to the principles 
 and details of any plan that they might recommend ; 
 
8 MR. BETTS ADDRESS. 
 
 and whether, in their opinion, it could be successfully 
 carried into execution ; and in connection therewith, 
 that they consider whether, for the more effectual 
 carrying out such plan, and extending the benefits of 
 the institution, it ought to afford rooms and com 
 mons, or rooms alone for resident students, or ought 
 to have its seat isolated." 
 
 These instructions, it may be observed, covered the 
 whole subject of the higher branches of learning ; 
 and, by directing the principles of any plan to be 
 detailed, it necessarily opened an inquiry into the 
 objects and ends of a thorough education, as well as 
 the best means of attaining those objects and ends. 
 The Committee entered upon their duties with 
 promptness ; and at the next meeting of the Board of 
 Trustees, in November, 1853, they made a prelimi 
 nary report, in which they stated, as the ground 
 work of their future proceedings, their conviction, 
 that the proper business of a College education was 
 .the cultivation of the human intellect in all its parts 
 and functions, with a view to a full development of 
 the mental and moral qualities : generally, to form 
 and give direction to the mind, without reference 
 to any specific future employment. 
 
 The Committee knew that this view did not com 
 mand popular sympathy. They knew that the pub- 
 .lic generally, unaccustomed to look upon the mind 
 
ME. BETTS ADDEESS. 9 
 
 except in connection with the body, and to regard 
 it as a machine for promoting the pleasures, the con 
 veniences, or the comforts of the latter, might be 
 dissatisfied with a system of education in which they 
 were unable to perceive the direct connection be 
 tween the knowledge imparted and the advantages 
 to be gained. They hoped that some means might 
 be devised for satisfying, in some measure, this de 
 mand ; but, in seeking this object, they were admon 
 ished, by experience, authority and reason, not to 
 diminish, in the slightest degree, the high value which 
 was placed on the right acquisition of the Greek and 
 Latin Classics. With respect to the establishment 
 of a post-graduate university system in addition to 
 the under-graduate course, they were not prepared to 
 say more, than that they regarded it favorably in 
 those respects in which it might be practicable : but 
 that the design was not free from serious difficulties ; 
 that the subject had occupied the minds of learned 
 men in connection with the English Universities, but 
 hitherto without effect ; that the Medical and Theo 
 logical Schools had done much, perhaps all that could 
 at present be done in that direction ; but in regard 
 to higher jurisprudence, and the sciences and their 
 applications, much might possibly be done by the 
 College. 
 
 The Committee likewise recommended the imme 
 
10 MR. BETTS ADDRESS. 
 
 diate removal of the College ; but, although exertions 
 were made to attain that object, they were fortunate 
 ly, as subsequent events proved, unsuccessful. 
 
 The general principle of Collegiate Education hav 
 ing been thus briefly, but decidedly exhibited to the 
 Board of Trustees, and no dissenting opinion having 
 been expressed, it became proper to invoke the ad 
 vice of the several members of the Faculty, whose 
 acquirements and experience peculiarly qualified them 
 to afford aid at this juncture ; and without whose 
 harmonious co-operation with the Trustees no success 
 could be expected in the proposed operations. Most 
 of the Faculty gave written responses to the inqui 
 ries addressed to them ; and it was satisfactory and 
 gratifying that their concurrence with the views of 
 the Committee, as to the fundamental principles and 
 true ends of education, was entirely unanimous. 
 
 The answers of the Faculty to the inquiries made 
 had not, however, been immediate ; and, in the mean 
 while, a full report was made to the Board of Trus 
 tees, by the same Committee, on the 24th of July, 
 1854, comprehending all the subjects which had been 
 referred to them, and reporting fully the principles 
 which had guided them in the adoption of the plan 
 recommended. That plan, as eventually modified, 
 will soon be explained. It was contained in a sylla 
 bus or outline of a statute ; and, as the revenues of 
 
MR. BETTS ADDRESS. 11 
 
 the College were not then in a condition to authorize 
 an immediate expansion, an opportunity was allowed 
 for examination and criticism, and for receiving from 
 the Faculty the mature results of their reflections. 
 The answers of several of the Faculty having been 
 at length received, and the Board of Trustees having 
 had a full opportunity for deliberation, the Com 
 mittee, on the 4th of June, 1855, again brought the 
 subject before the Trustees, and professed themselves 
 ready to report a statute, at any time that the Board 
 might desire, and be prepared to receive it. 
 
 On the 12th of January, 185Y, the time had ar 
 rived, when from the necessity of removal, and the 
 probability of an augmented revenue, the Board of 
 Trustees were prepared for action ; and accordingly, 
 on that day, they directed the Committee on the 
 course, " to bring in the full statute to comprehend 
 the whole scheme of College and University instruc 
 tion contemplated by their former report." 
 
 The requisition was promptly obeyed, and the full 
 statute prepared and reported on the second day of 
 March. In the brief interval, the site on which the 
 old College stood had been sold, and the removal of 
 the institution was to take place in May. 
 
 For two or three years preceding this period, ar 
 rangements had been going on for the erection of 
 proper and permanent buildings on the Botanic Gar- 
 
12 MR. BETTS ADDRESS. 
 
 den grounds ; but the uncertainty attending the event 
 ual arrangement of those grounds, and other circum 
 stances which could not be controlled, suspended the 
 prosecution of the design. A variety of proposals 
 had from time to time been made for removal to 
 temporary buildings ; but the transfer of a large insti 
 tution, with its library, apparatus, and necessary para 
 phernalia, was no easy matter. This subject might 
 have created a serious embarrassment, had not the 
 offer of the buildings, formerly occupied by the Deaf 
 and Dumb Institution, provided a mode of accommo 
 dation, which promised to be both efficacious and 
 economical. 
 
 The Trustees now set about effecting their purpose 
 in earnest. By the month of July the statute was 
 modified, altered and completed, and assumed its 
 present shape ; and, about the commencement of the 
 Collegiate term in autumn, four professors and one 
 associate had been added to the body of instructors. 
 
 You have been told that, in directing the prepara 
 tion of the statute, the Committee were instructed to 
 comprehend in it the whole scheme of Collegiate and 
 University studies contemplated by their former re 
 port. The phrase " University studies" was one of 
 mere convenience ; perhaps not very accurate, and 
 was intended to denote that instruction which might 
 be imparted after graduation. 
 
MR. BETTS ADDRESS. IB 
 
 The studies denominated Collegiate are well under 
 stood. They comprise the various branches known 
 as the Classical, Philosophical, Historical, Belles-let 
 tres, Mathematical, and in some degree Scientific. 
 The latter term, however inappropriate as an exclu 
 sive name, has been assumed by that peculiar branch 
 of human learning which comprehends the nature, 
 operation and laws of Matter. That branch has been, 
 and is, perpetually expanding by new discoveries. If 
 it were expected that it should be included, much be 
 yond the elements, in the usual collegiate course, then 
 a useful college education would be simply impos 
 sible. There had been indications abroad, that, not 
 withstanding its evident impracticability, this was 
 expected. It would fatigue you to enter into any 
 detail of the suggestions or discussions on this sub 
 ject. It may suffice, for this occasion, to say that an 
 effort was made to satisfy, as far as possible, all de 
 mands, and that the plan now adopted, and about to 
 go into operation, was upon the whole, after full con 
 sideration, regarded as the best which could be fallen 
 upon, for an experiment. 
 
 That plan adopts in substance the former collegiate 
 curriculum to the close of the Third or Junior year, 
 with adaptations to the future studies, both sub-grad 
 uate and post-graduate. At the commencement of 
 the Fourth or Senior year, the studies assume a 
 
14 MR. BETTS ADDRESS. 
 
 wider scope, and comprehend a variety of topics. 
 These studies, too numerous to be pursued in one or 
 two courses, even in the most elementary manner, are 
 distributed into three departments, in order that they 
 may be prosecuted with some hope of advantage. 
 Up to this point of college life, the end in view is 
 mainly to discipline and invigorate the mind, and to 
 enlighten and purify the heart. Now, the object is to 
 apply this intellectual light and vigor to the perma 
 nent acquisition of knowledge ; to emancipate the stu 
 dent gradually from the trammels of catechetical 
 teaching, and to prepare him for the higher and more 
 arduous efforts of self-instruction. With this view, 
 three departments are constructed, which are termed 
 Schools of Letters, of Science, and of Jurisprudence ; 
 the first of which has reference to general improve 
 ment ; the two latter to specific objects, as indicated 
 by their names. On entering the Senior year, each 
 student may select either of these schools. Should 
 he neglect to make a selection, he continues in the 
 Classical or School of Letters. 
 
 After graduation, the same schools are proposed to 
 be continued for two years. A reference to the pro 
 posed course of instruction will show that they com 
 prehend a large circle of human learning. The 
 instruction in these schools is not to be confined to 
 the graduates of the college. It is open to the whole 
 
ME. BETTS 7 ADDKESS. 15 
 
 world. A sufficient body of teachers is provided to 
 commence the undertaking. A nucleus is presented 
 for a great university, adapted and prepared to meet 
 all the wants of the community. If there be really 
 that demand for the acquisition of knowledge which 
 has been supposed, it may here be satisfied. If there 
 be in fact no such demand, or such only to a limited 
 extent, time will soon develop the truth. It is indeed 
 hoped that the graduates of the college, animated by 
 a noble and inspiring love of learning, will not fail 
 to take advantage of the proposed means of instruc 
 tion thus afforded to them, and that others will grad 
 ually be drawn to join them. 
 
 The progress of the undertaking may be slow ; it 
 may be unsuccessful. The slowness of its progress 
 need, however, not to produce despair. Most things 
 that are valuable and lasting are slow in progression. 
 Time and experience will, however, soon demonstrate 
 the utility of the attempt ; and it is so devised, that 
 it may be expanded, contracted, or discontinued 
 without difficulty. 
 
 Among the late changes, it may be observed, that 
 the Chapel exercises have been modified, and greater 
 solemnity imparted to the service ; the Library has 
 been stimulated ; large accessions have been made to 
 the Chemical and Physical Departments ; the Astro 
 nomical Department forwarded, and measures taken 
 
16 MR. BETTS ADDRESS. 
 
 for the establishment of an Observatory; and, in 
 general, liberal contributions have been made to the 
 requirements of all the chairs. The price of tuition 
 has been reduced nearly one-half. The division of 
 the classes into sections gives an opportunity for 
 more thorough instruction. Moreover, a Commission 
 of Inquiry has been instituted, for gathering in 
 formation from every accessible quarter of this 
 country, having in view the general advancement of 
 learning, and enforcement of discipline, the results 
 of which have not yet been made known to the 
 Trustees. 
 
 The revenue of the College is yet limited ; its en 
 largement is prospective, of course uncertain, and 
 under any circumstances much below the common 
 supposition. Should the effort now in progress be 
 successful, the Trustees propose to add, from time to 
 time, every necessary appliance for the advancement 
 of learning, to the extent of the means enjoyed by 
 them ; but they feel it a duty not to lavish those 
 means, and, by heedlessly exhausting them, defeat the 
 hopes of the true friends of education. 
 
 A brief history has thus been offered of the late 
 changes in the course of study, of their enlargement, 
 and of the purposes and hopes of the Trustees in re 
 gard to their future operations. Before dismissing 
 this subject, you will pardon a few general remarks 
 
ME. BETTS ADDRESS. 17 
 
 having reference to the principles comprehended in 
 the recent measures of the College. 
 
 The young student, when he presents himself for 
 admission into College, is just emerging from boy 
 hood; and, before he completes the portion of time 
 to be passed within its walls, will be, essentially, a 
 man. The class of youth who are sent here are, for 
 the most part, a select class ; selected from their sup 
 posed promise for the future ; selected by the fond 
 expectations of loving parents ; or to qualify them 
 selves rightly to occupy the position in society for 
 which Providence appears to have designed them. 
 They are to occupy the higher positions of society : 
 those young men are thereafter to form a leaven, 
 which is to spread its influence throughout the com 
 munity, either for evil or for good. If their tenden 
 cies be well directed, they will become a blessing to 
 themselves, to their immediate companions, and to the 
 world in which they may move. Should their ten 
 dencies be ill-directed, they will be equally a curse. 
 With the vivacity and buoyancy of youth, with its 
 joyous, exuberant and not easily restrained overflow 
 of spirits, they generally bring with them an appre 
 hension of truth, an instinct of honor, and an appre 
 ciation of justice, which, if discreetly managed, will 
 lead and keep them in the right direction. If there 
 be exceptions ; if there be found some ignoble spirits 
 
18 MR, BETTS ADDRESS. 
 
 who have strayed among them, it does not require 
 much observation to detect them, and they should at 
 once be rooted out. This young band, who annually 
 present themselves, asking to be carried through the 
 most critical portions of their lives, and who con 
 fidingly throw themselves into the protection of the 
 College ; who come, in a measure, divested of the un 
 sleeping and anxious carefulness which has watched 
 them from the cradle up to this period, when they 
 seek to be instructed to walk alone ; to go forth from 
 the College walls armed with the panoply of virtue 
 and of learning; to meet the masses of evil which 
 they will be sure to encounter in later life ; have a 
 right to all the thought, all the intelligence, and all 
 the experience that can be brought to bear upon 
 their situation. It is true that the period between 
 their entrance into College life and their departure 
 from it is short; but it is the very heart of their 
 life ; it is just the period which gives color to their 
 future, and stamps it for good or for evil in this 
 world, and it may be in the world to come. The 
 responsibility which rests upon giving a right direc 
 tion during this period, is just in proportion to the 
 greatness of the results ; and no right-thinking man, 
 whether among the Trustees or the Faculty, can fail 
 to feel the graveness of the charge which is laid upon 
 him. Whatever other duties may devolve upon the 
 
MR. BETTS ADDRESS. 19 
 
 authorities of the College, this one is clear, that they 
 are bound to exercise their best energies and their 
 best judgment for the benefit of the youth entrusted 
 to their care ; and, although it may be incumbent on 
 them to extend, as far as practicable, the circle of 
 human learning, and to bring as many as possible 
 within its operation, the other is the most pressing 
 and paramount obligation. 
 
 Perhaps it may be said, that the means to attain 
 the desired ends are obvious that they are simply 
 Discipline and Education words easy to be spoken ; 
 difficult to be apprehended ; most difficult to be 
 rightly employed. With regard to discipline, can 
 you not see at once the difference which may result 
 from regarding the young as noble, confiding, and 
 honest, or as selfish, narrow, and insincere ? In the 
 applications of rewards, can you not perceive the dis 
 tinction between those which appeal to lofty sen 
 timents, and those which address themselves to 
 sordid feelings ? In punishments, between those 
 which are gently but unavoidably applied as a warn 
 ing to youthful infirmity, and those which are rudely 
 inflicted as a punishment of vice ? And yet these 
 are but broad distinctions which separate many 
 varieties. On the Trustees of the College it de 
 volves to prescribe judicious rules ; they should look 
 well that those rules be founded on right principles ; 
 
20 MR. BETTS ADDRESS. 
 
 but on the Faculty lies a far greater weight of duty. 
 Their daily intercourse with the students is not sus 
 ceptible of regulation ; and it is from their conduct, 
 and their example, that habits of order, diligence, 
 obedience and truth, must be acquired : and as it is 
 written, that spark kindleth spark, and fire answer- 
 eth to fire, so the young men in their turn should 
 never fail to give to generous confidence a generous 
 response. 
 
 With regard to Education, likewise, there are great 
 diversities of opinion, both as respects its object and 
 its means. By some it is regarded as a mere prepa 
 ration for an establishment in some calling or profes 
 sion; by others as the guide to the young for the 
 discharge of all their duties in after-life ; for thor 
 oughly understanding the nature of every relation 
 that may be thrown upon them, and of applying the 
 highest principles and the greatest power in every 
 position in which they may be placed ; never allow 
 ing them for a moment to forget that they are heirs 
 of an unending life, and stewards of a priceless trust. 
 The former is the popular idea of collegiate and all 
 other education the latter is that which influences 
 us here. To educate the intellect, to purify and 
 direct the heart, to train the youthful aspirants to 
 correct motives and designs, to provide them with 
 the means of successfully pursuing any career which 
 
ME. BETTS* ADDRESS. 21 
 
 they may hereafter select, these are the ends which 
 this College has essentially in view, -in its system of 
 sub-graduate instruction. Nor does it adopt this sys 
 tem unaided by the lights of usage, experience, and 
 authority. The gymnasia of Continental Europe 
 and the great universities of the English Islands 
 conduct their instruction upon this principle ; and, 
 especially in the case of the latter, with wonderful suc 
 cess. The great thinkers of all times have advocated 
 the cultivation of the mind, as the object of first 
 importance ; and the acquisition and application of 
 knowledge as altogether secondary. Of the great 
 thinkers, it will be sufficient to point to one in the 
 ancient, and another in modern times. 
 
 In one of his dialogues, Plato represents Socrates, 
 when pointing to the magnificent works that extend 
 ed and secured the commerce of Athens, enlarged her 
 revenues, and filled her with material comforts, and 
 splendors, and luxuries, as calling all those posses 
 sions the merest trifles in comparison with the funda 
 mental virtues ; nay, more, as probable causes of 
 future misfortune, and their projectors as authors, not 
 of benefaction, but of calamity. 
 
 One of the most brilliant intellects of our own 
 days has not thought this subject beneath his mighty 
 mind. A liberal education is defined by the late Sir 
 William Hamilton to be " an education in which the 
 
22 MR, BETTS 7 ADDKESS. 
 
 individual is cultivated, not as an instrument towards 
 some ulterior end, but as an end unto himself alone : 
 in other words as an education, in which his absolute 
 perfection as a man, and not merely his relative 
 dexterity as a professional man, is the scope imme 
 diately in view." To add to these authorities would 
 be easy, but is unnecessary. 
 
 Looking at this subject from any point, we may 
 safely conclude that the instruction in the College, 
 covering the period of life between boyhood and 
 manhood, and forming the bridge by which we pass 
 from home into the world, is one of peculiar im 
 portance. To the College is committed the mind of 
 the future man at this critical time ; and it is the prop 
 er duty of the College to direct and superintend the 
 mental and moral culture, and to form the mind or 
 man. Moral and intellectual discipline is the object 
 of Collegiate education. The mere acquisition of 
 learning, however valuable and desirable in itself, is 
 subordinate to this great work. Not only is this the 
 peculiar business of the College, but in the College 
 alone, as a general rule, can this work be performed. 
 The design of a College is, to make perfect the human 
 intellect in all its parts and functions, by means of a 
 thorough training of the intellectual faculties to their 
 full development, and, by the proper guidance of 
 the moral functions, to a right direction. To form 
 
MR. BETTS 5 ADDRESS. 23 
 
 the mind, is, in short, the high design of education 
 as sought in a College course. 
 
 But this College, in the enlargement of its course 
 and of its objects, does not propose to stop short here. 
 Thus far the intellectual faculties have been devel 
 oped and strengthened ; and a right direction given 
 to the moral functions. The youth is now supposed 
 to be competent to begin any task to which his 
 strong inclination, or peculiar disposition, may di 
 rect him ; and which he may undertake with greater 
 prospect of usefulness than if any peculiar class 
 of powers had been cultivated, to the neglect of 
 others. 
 
 To this time have been mainly used the common 
 means of education, which ^re found in the classics, 
 the mathematics, and the teachings of moral and 
 mental science, in connection with the whole history 
 of man, his thoughts, his relations, duties, deeds and 
 productions; and these, it is thought, properly ap 
 plied and industriously appropriated, will produce 
 the fairest result of a finished intellectual discipline, 
 and present an accomplished intellect, prepared for 
 any career, competent to encounter any difficulties, 
 in learning, in morals, or in action, and capable, with 
 courage and perseverance, of overcoming or remov 
 ing them. 
 
 Then it is that the post-graduate or university es- 
 
24 MK. BETTS ADDRESS. 
 
 tablishment offers its aid in the prosecution of special 
 pursuits, excluding, for the present, the faculties of 
 Theology and Medicine. Then the young student, 
 following the road which has been partially entered 
 in the last year of his college life, may direct his ex 
 ertions to the particular calling selected for his future 
 career ; and then it is that Science, with its specula 
 tions, and discoveries, and applications, may be profit 
 ably studied. 
 
 Permit a single observation more, and you shall 
 no longer be detained from the discourse which is to 
 follow. 
 
 It may be remarked, that while augmentations 
 have been made to all the other chairs of the college, 
 those of the Greek and Latin alone are left as they 
 were. Do not attribute this to any diminution of 
 esteem for those venerable and noble languages. 
 When the full course shall be in operation, adequate 
 aid will not be wanting to those chairs ; but their in 
 cumbents are both able and willing to undertake all 
 the present labors, heavy though they be. This Col 
 lege ever has acted upon the principle, that the very 
 best means of intellectual training may be found in 
 the learned languages. For this purpose, these lan 
 guages are successfully employed from the period 
 when the child first acquires an easy mastery of his 
 mother tongue for ordinary purposes, down to the 
 
ME. BETTS ADDKESS. 25 
 
 time when the intellect becomes vigorous in early 
 manhood. During this period, the learned languages, 
 by their novelty, regular structure and musical beau 
 ty, awaken a love of study, command the attention, 
 strengthen the memory, improve the reasoning facul 
 ty and the judgment ; call into action exactness, com 
 parison, invention, self-reliance, and all the other 
 faculties, besides laying up a rich store of beautiful 
 images, noble sentiments, worthy examples, and a 
 mass of facts which, dwelling in the midst of harmo 
 nious and perfect tongues, purify the heart, exalt and 
 ennoble the principles, create and cultivate a refined 
 taste, enlarge the understanding, arouse a love of free 
 dom and of virtue ; and, in short, fill the whole man 
 with a power of appreciating excellence. 
 
 Wretched, indeed, would be the day for this insti 
 tution, should she lose her proud position as the Clas 
 sical College of the country ; saddened the hopes of 
 her sons, should she become indifferent to the pre 
 cious treasures of those ancient people. Nowhere, 
 since the creation of this earth, when first the Al 
 mighty Spirit spread forth his wings above the min 
 gled chaos, and with the fiat of his word called it to 
 Light, to Order, and to Life, nowhere and at no 
 time has the world beheld so marvellous an exhibition 
 of intellectual power, as in the Grecian people, dur 
 ing the short period of Grecian domination ; nowhere 
 
26 ME. BETTS ADDEESS. 
 
 so exquisite an appreciation of beauty in all its forms, 
 material and mental, and so wonderful a power of 
 producing it ; nowhere such models of intelligence 
 in every branch of human acquisition and human in 
 quiry, which never have been equalled in after-times, 
 and which serve to show of what the human mind is 
 capable. 
 
 Nor were the Romans less wonderful in their pecu 
 liar character. Deriving many of their acquisitions 
 from the Greeks, and second to the Greeks alone, 
 they far transcend all other people, and throw all 
 other histories wholly in the shade. To count the 
 gifts we have received from these two nations, 
 whether in their laws, their literature, their customs, 
 their arts, or the precious legacy of the Sacred Scrip 
 tures, transmitted in the Grecian tongue, we could 
 not tell where to begin, or where to end. So abund 
 ant, indeed, are their productions, so precious their 
 treasures, that the same eulogy, which would else 
 where be extravagance, becomes to them but truth. 
 Never, therefore, may this venerable institution be 
 come insensible to the value of classic learning; 
 never may she cease from its copious fountains to 
 draw exuberant supplies ; never, never, may she for 
 get that, saving the gift of the Sacred Writings, in 
 these old treasures of Greece and Rome are garnered 
 the most precious stores of deep philosophy, unequal- 
 
ME, BETTS ADDEESS. 2Y 
 
 led wisdom, of unrivalled eloquence, of poetic excel 
 lence ; and there, too, those marvels of artistic beauty, 
 elevating the imagination, refining the sentiments and 
 purifying the heart, which age after age admires 
 and wonders at, and which are endued with a grace 
 and loveliness beyond the rivalry and almost the imi 
 tation of modern times. Never may our College 
 cease to be a seminary in which such things are 
 taught, and through which a knowledge of them 
 may in some measure be attained : and then, when, 
 in her after-course, she is preparing her sons for the 
 busy tumults of life, or unfolding to them the strange 
 secrets of the material world, explaining their oper 
 ations, and applying their powers to the good of 
 man, or walking with them in the high regions of 
 the heavenly lights, she may say to them, My sons, I 
 have tried in all things to perform my duty ; I have 
 opened to you the treasures of the past and of the 
 present ; I have sought to impart to you not only 
 learning but understanding ; I have taught you to 
 regard knowledge no otherwise than as " a rich store 
 house for the glory of God and the relief of man s 
 estate ;" and I charge you, as you value the privileges 
 of the past and the aspirations of the future, I 
 charge you, never to apply it to any lower pur 
 poses. 
 
CHEMISTRY; 
 
 AN 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 
 
 BeUberett before tije trustees 
 
 OF 
 
 COLUMBIA COLLEGE, 
 
 February 4, A. D. 1868, 
 
 BY CHARLES A. JOY, PH. D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY IN COLUMBIA COLLEGE. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 IN assuming the duties of the Chair to which the 
 Trustees of Columbia College have done me the honor 
 to appoint me, it is proper that I should sketch the 
 rise and progress of the science which I am called 
 upon to teach, and vindicate its claims to be regarded 
 as among the most important branches of human 
 knowledge. 
 
 CHEMISTRY was not accorded a place as a distinct 
 science, until within the memory of men still living. 
 The name, it is true, had existed for centuries. 
 With its prefix Al, it carries us away back to its 
 learned Arabian professors, and suggests to us the dis 
 coveries they made and the uses they made of them. 
 But it was not until the world had profited by Black s 
 researches into Fixed Air, and Priestly had made his 
 immortal discovery of Oxygen ; not until Cavendish 
 had decomposed the ancient element of Water, and 
 Lavoisier, while separating the pure jewel of scien 
 tific truth from the rubbish of ages, and extending, by 
 his own investigations, the boundaries of Chemical 
 knowledge, had given order and system to the results 
 
32 ME. JOY S ADDRESS. 
 
 of the labors of his predecessors and contemporaries 
 that Chemistry was entitled to an independent posi 
 tion among the sciences. 
 
 It is pretty evident that the Egyptians, at a very 
 early period, had far outstripped their neighbors in 
 the pursuit of knowledge, and that, too, of various 
 kinds, but more especially in the various departments 
 of what we now call Natural Philosophy. Hence, it 
 is common to attribute to them considerable acquaint 
 ance with Chemical facts. But whatever may have 
 been the extent of this knowledge, it would seem 
 that it was confined to the priests. In this they were 
 by no means alone, for such was then, and for very 
 long after, the case among all nations. The priest 
 hood was the great repository of learning of every 
 sort ; the religion, the laws, and the government were 
 all more or less in their hands, as well as the know 
 ledge of the facts and principles on which were based 
 their systems of both mental and physical philosophy, 
 the greater part of which they seem to have carefully 
 concealed from the popular mind, 
 
 It was to these Egyptians that the Greeks were in 
 debted for much of their knowledge. Then, as now, 
 the true seekers after knowledge and truth left their 
 homes to look in other lands for additions to their 
 stores. And it was when thus engaged that Pytha 
 goras, and Solon, and Herodotus, and Plato, and 
 
MR. JOY S ADDRESS. 33 
 
 others of the mighty and noble spirits of Greece 
 gained the information and acquired the experience 
 with which they returned to their own land, to repro 
 duce, and vastly improve upon, what they had learned 
 from the sages of Egypt. From the Greeks, again, 
 the Romans received their most valuable lessons, in 
 all learning, and in this, our particular branch of 
 knowledge, as in all others. Nor were they at all 
 negligent of their acquisitions, for they soon applied 
 their energy and newly acquired skill in such a way 
 as to make very considerable contributions to Chemi 
 cal Science. 
 
 True, they both had some strange notions about the 
 use to be made of their Chemical knowledge, which, 
 however, were thoroughly utilitarian. The notion of 
 transmuting the base metals into gold was such an one. 
 And this is supposed to have existed among the 
 Greeks. One interpretation of the Golden Fleece is, 
 that it is a mythical expression for a parchment on 
 which had been written a description of the process 
 of making gold. Aristotle recognized four elements, 
 viz. : Earth, Air, Fire and Water, though he also 
 taught the existence of still another substance of a 
 more ethereal nature, which he called the fifth essence, 
 or, as it is expressed in Latin, essentia qiiinta (quin 
 tessence) ; and this fifth element played an important 
 part in the controversies of after-ages. 
 
34 MR, JOY S ADDRESS. 
 
 These strange notions, as we call them, did not 
 vanish with Grecian eloquence, or fall with Roman 
 power. It was in following out such notions that the 
 Alchemists of the Middle Ages kept on searching for 
 the Philosopher s Stone, that great transmuter of all 
 base things into veritable gold. Though they never 
 found the stone, we have this day to thank them 
 for the many valuable discoveries which they did 
 make, and of which the Chemists of the 18th and 
 19th centuries were able, to much purpose, to avail 
 themselves. 
 
 By these Alchemists Sulphuric Acid was discovered 
 more than a thousand years ago ; and to them we also 
 owe Muriatic Acid, Nitric Acid, Ammonia, the Fixed 
 Alkalies, Alcohol, Ether, and many Alloys of the 
 Metals. They accounted for everything in what we 
 would call a supernatural way; they looked upon 
 bodies not merely as inorganic masses, but they taught 
 the presence of a spirit in every combination, and, in 
 accordance with their belief and their teaching, they 
 gave names which still remain in daily use among us. 
 To this we owe such names as Spirit of Wine, Spirit 
 of Salt, Spirit of Ether, and the like. At a later 
 period, Van Helmont, following somewhat in their 
 path, gave to all aeriform bodies the name of Gheist 
 or Spirit, and from which we derive the modern word 
 Gas. 
 
MR. JOY S ADDRESS. 35 
 
 As they taught the existence of a spirit in bodies 
 so they taught that these bodies were affected in 
 various ways. The baser metals they spoke of as dis 
 eased ; Brass was diseased Gold ; Quicksilver, diseased 
 Silver ; and so they accounted for all the phenomena 
 of nature in a manner which, at the present day, it is 
 difficult to look upon as having ever been regarded as 
 philosophical. For example, they said that the cause 
 of the falling of a body is its weight, and that weight 
 is the tendency of a body to fall. A stone falls, 
 said they, because it is heavy, that is, because it 
 has a tendency to downward motion. Opium, they 
 said, produces sleep, because it is a body to which 
 belongs a sleep-producing property. The caustic pro 
 perties of Potash were said to be due to a something 
 which they called Causticum. And in this manner 
 they were prepared to give an explanation of every 
 phenomenon of nature. 
 
 For fourteen hundred years no Alchemist ventured 
 to dispute the views of his predecessors. An unqua 
 lified submission to the traditions of the past charac 
 terized this long period. But the founding of the 
 Universities, the discovery, first, of the passage round 
 the Cape of Good Hope, and then of the American 
 Continent, gave an impulse to everything, and occasi 
 oned a greater interchange of knowledge among the 
 nations, whilst the seizure of Constantinople by the 
 
36 MR. JOY S ADDRESS. 
 
 Turks, in A. D. 1453, scattered a knowledge of the 
 Arts and Sciences throughout Western Europe. The 
 invention of Printing and the events of the Reform 
 ation put an end to the blind obedience to the 
 authorities of the past, which had so long prevailed. 
 
 Paracelsus was one of the first to impart a new 
 direction to Chemical researches. He affirmed that 
 the decayed forces of the human constitution might be 
 indefinitely extended by means within the reach of 
 man. His dreams are matters of amusement now, 
 but the value of his influence, in breaking up the old 
 alchemistic theories, cannot be overrated. He was a 
 Harbinger of our great Science, and a Pioneer in its 
 work of discovery, and therefore entitled to more 
 than a passing notice in its History. 
 
 Philip Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombas- 
 tus von Hohenheim, as he styled himself, was born in 
 Einsiedeln, Switzerland, A. D. 1493. His father was 
 a Physician, and early instructed him in Medicine, 
 Astrology, and Alchemy. Paracelsus was a great 
 traveler, visiting nearly every part of Europe, and 
 finally retiring to Saltzburg, where he died, A. D. 
 1541. Though he was not old when he died, it was 
 generally believed that he had discovered the Elixir 
 Vitse, and his tomb became an object of superstitious 
 veneration. Even to the present day the stones about 
 it are worn away by the numbers who come to pray 
 
MR. JOY S ADDEESS. 37 
 
 for friends afflicted with disease. I once went to visit 
 the laboratory of this remarkable man. A tablet on 
 the wall indicated the house, and some flowers in a 
 window showed that it was inhabited. I readily ob 
 tained permission to examine the room in which Para 
 celsus had compounded those strange mixtures which 
 are not dreamt of even in the quackery of our day. 
 Scarcely a remnant of the old hearth and flues re 
 mained ; but it was interesting to stand upon the 
 spot on which the first great opposition was made to 
 the Alchemistic theories, and from which Chemistry 
 first started upon its path of usefulness to mankind. 
 For two hundred years, the attention of Chemists hav 
 ing been withdrawn, through the influence of Para 
 celsus, from the search after the Philosopher s Stone, 
 investigators took the direction of Pharmaceutical 
 Chemistry, and some important discoveries were made. 
 
 Stahl, who died A. D. 1685, was the first to pro- 
 mulge the Phlogistic theory, which occupied such an 
 important place in the studies of a hundred years. 
 
 Phlogiston, according to him. was present in every 
 Chemical phenomenon. He taught, for instance, that 
 Phosphorus, when burnt, loses its Phlogiston, and that 
 the white acid, which is the result of the combustion, 
 if mixed with charcoal and distilled, yields Phosphorus, 
 because the coal gives back the lost Phlogiston to the 
 Phosphorus. And it is remarkable that, although the 
 
38 MR. JOYS ADDRESS. 
 
 substance, in burning, is increased in weight, they still 
 clung to the idea that it lost Phlogiston, though this 
 Phlogiston, they maintained, was possessed of levity, 
 and thus made a body lighter. This theory was stoutly 
 maintained for a hundred years, until overturned by 
 the grandest of all Chemical discoveries, that of Oxy 
 gen, which was made by Joseph Priestley, on the first 
 day of August, A. D. 17T4. 
 
 A dispute in the French Academy, between Cadet 
 and Baume, about the red-oxide of Mercury, led to 
 Priestley s making some researches into the properties 
 of this compound. He concentrated the solar-rays 
 upon the red-precipitate, and preserved the gas which 
 was- evolved ; he applied a lighted taper to this gas, 
 and from that moment the discovery had been made. 
 According to his own account, it was accident which 
 led to the discovery, but accident only accords such 
 favors to those who deserve them. The man who 
 had discovered nine gases, who had invented all 
 the apparatus necessary to prepare and study them, 
 could well have laid claim to this immortal dis 
 covery. 
 
 Chemistry, as a distinct science, dates from this 
 discovery. It is nearly of the same age as our Re 
 public, and, in its way, it has made equal progress to 
 greatness. The immortal discoverer of Oxygen sought 
 refuge in this country, and died at Northumberland, 
 
MR. JOY S ADDRESS. 39 
 
 Pennsylvania, on the sixth day of February, A. D. 
 180-i, in the 71st year of his age. 
 
 " Westward the Star of Empire takes its way." 
 
 May this prove true in Science and Art, as well as in 
 political advancement. 
 
 There is something sublime in the thought of be 
 ing the discoverer of such an element as Oxygen. 
 When we contemplate its abundance, its necessity to 
 the very existence of all animated nature, and the 
 part it plays everywhere, we are struck with amaze 
 ment that it should have remained so long unknown, 
 and are able to appreciate more fully the importance 
 of its discovery. 
 
 Independently of Priestley, and about the same 
 time, the famous Swedish Chemist, Scheele, made the 
 same discovery ; but to Priestley is due the honor of 
 having laid the foundation upon which the whole 
 superstructure of Chemistry has since been built. 
 
 We must not pass from the last century into our 
 own, without mentioning, with due honor, the name 
 of Lavoisier, for the world is chiefly indebted to the 
 genius of this great man for the invention of that 
 new Nomenclature in Chemistry which marked a 
 brilliant era in the History of the Science. 
 
 This remarkable man, " possessed of fortune suffi 
 cient to secure to him all the gratifications of luxury, 
 all the splendors of a princely establishment, gave his 
 
40 ME. JOY S ADDRESS. 
 
 time and his enthusiasm to the Science of Chemistry. 
 But, unfortunately, he took such an active part in the 
 first scenes of the French Revolution as to render 
 himself obnoxious to Robespierre. He was pursued 
 to his retreat, where he was carrying on a train of 
 magnificent Chemical Experiments, and hurried 
 thence to the scaffold." There were few victims of 
 those bloody times who could not have been better 
 spared than this illustrious man. Strange fate of the 
 two great founders of Chemistry, the one beheaded, 
 the other driven an exile to a foreign land. 
 
 It was at the beginning of the present century that 
 Berzelius, the most illustrious of all the Chemists that 
 ever lived, first appeared as an independent investiga 
 tor in the field of Physical Science. Volta had given 
 to the world the Battery which bears his name, and 
 the whole Scientific community was in excitement 
 upon the subject. Berzelius entered upon investiga 
 tions by aid of the Battery, and he was the first to 
 discover the thread which has led to the explanation 
 of many of the mysteries in Chemical combinations. 
 The account of the investigations, in the course of 
 which he systematized bodies in reference to their posi 
 tive and negative poles, was published in Gelilerfs 
 Journal, during the year 1803. Three years later 
 (in 1806), Sir Humphrey Davy published an account 
 of similar researches, in which he made no mention 
 
MR. JOY S ADDRESS. 41 
 
 of Berzelius, and for which he received from Napole 
 on the prize of three thousand francs, for the most 
 valuable researches in Voltaism. 
 
 After the discovery of the Metals of the Alkalies, 
 in the year 1.807, Berzelius continued his researches, 
 and was the first to use Mercury at one of the poles 
 of the Battery. It was not, however, with Voltaism 
 alone that Berzelius, in his earlier years, occupied 
 his time. The great Mineralogist, Hisinger, induced 
 him to turn his attention to the quantitative analysis 
 of minerals. He acknowledged to Rose, in after- 
 years, that these investigations were undertaken more 
 to oblige Hisinger than for any particular interest they 
 had for himself. But, after the discovery of the great 
 law of Chemical proportions, the case was different. 
 
 Berzelius was compelled to earn his living as a 
 practicing physician. This, at times, gave a particu 
 lar turn to his investigations. Hence, we find him 
 examining Medicinal Springs ; or establishing, at 
 Stockholm, the manufacture of artificial Mineral Wa 
 ters ; or, as a physician, early giving his attention to 
 Physiological and Organic Chemistry, and it is from 
 this circumstance that we are indebted to him for 
 many new and beautiful processes of Analysis. Then 
 again we find him, in some of his earliest efforts, busy 
 in the examination of Silica and Cast Iron. 
 
 During the first decennary of this century, Berze- 
 
42 ME. JOY S ADDEESS. 
 
 lius was induced, by the general interest in Galvan 
 ism, by the influence of his friend Hisinger, and by his 
 own necessities as a Physician, to make scientific re 
 searches ; but, after the idea of Chemical proportions 
 was started, he devoted all his energies to Chemistry ; 
 he soon put forth the Law of these proportions, and 
 upon that Law he founded all the subsequent experi 
 ments and researches of his life. He examined with the 
 greatest care, and by different modes of Analysis, a 
 vast number of Chemical compounds, and was thus led 
 to discover many methods of analysis, which are still 
 pursued. These researches and their results were pub 
 lished in the year 1810. At the time they were carried 
 on, Re-agents were scarcely to be had in Sweden, and 
 Berzelius was compelled to make them for himself; 
 even Alcohol and the most ordinary Acids w r ere pre 
 pared in his own Laboratory. The extraordinary 
 spectacle was, at this time, presented to the world, of 
 a Philosopher at work in his kitchen, making re 
 searches which were destined to revolutionize Chem 
 ical Science, and for which the world could not have 
 adequately compensated him if it had erected for 
 him a Laboratory of solid gold ; while by his side, at 
 the same hearth, his faithful servant, Anne, was pre 
 paring his frugal meal. He introduced more accurate 
 Balances ; the use of smaller amounts of substances 
 for analysis ; the lamp which bears his name ; plati- 
 
ME. JOY ? S ADDRESS. 43 
 
 num-crucibles ; Swedish filtering-paper ; funnels ; 
 beaker glasses; and many pieces of apparatus wliicli 
 now seem to us very common and simple indeed. He 
 was also the first to make the Laboratory a light and 
 cheerful study instead of a dark and dismal cellar. 
 As it was necessary for him to economize in every 
 thing, he took lessons in Glass-blowing, and learned 
 the trade of the Joiner, so that he could make nearly 
 all of his apparatus himself. It was in the year 1815 
 that Berzelius introduced the symbols which are now 
 employed in the place of the Alchemistic figures, 
 which are retained only to designate the planets, 
 and was thus enabled to express the Chemical 
 composition of different bodies by Formulae. Dai- 
 ton had undertaken, in the year 1808, to establish 
 some simple method for expressing the composition 
 of bodies, but it was not so practical as the one 
 prepared by Berzelius, and is, at present, scarcely 
 known. It was not until he had occupied ten years 
 in examining the elements and their combinations 
 that Berzelius was able to publish, in the year 1818, 
 his Tables, containing the Atomic-weights of nearly 
 two thousand simple and compound bodies. 
 
 It has already been said that Berzelius, at an early 
 period, gave some attention to Organic Chemistry. 
 The first important analyses in this department were 
 made by Thenard and Gay-Lussac, in the year 1811. 
 
44 ME. JOY S ADDKESS. 
 
 But, iii the year 1814, Berzelius published a paper on 
 this subject, in which he applied the Law of Chem 
 ical-proportions to Organic Bodies. He found that 
 Organic Acids, and even indifferent substances, form 
 ed compounds of fixed proportions with Organic 
 Oxides. This originated the Radical theory, and 
 through its application we are able to ascertain the 
 Atomic- weights of Organic substances. 
 
 Since the death of Berzelius many Radicals, pro 
 posed by him as hypothetical, have been confirmed by 
 actual discovery. 
 
 The discovery and investigation of the properties of 
 Selenium was one of the greatest works of Berzelius. 
 Excepting the discovery of Selenic acid, in the year 
 1827, by his pupil, Mitscherlich, very little has since 
 been added to our knowledge of this metal. " The 
 investigations upon this element," says Rose, " were 
 made with half an ounce of substance, a part of which 
 was lost by the carelessness of a servant." The 
 beauty of the work can only be compared with that 
 of the investigations upon Iodine by Gay-Lussac. 
 Berzelius examined one hundred and twenty Salts of 
 Sulphur, many of them quantitatively. The publica 
 tion of his famous Hand-book occasioned the examin 
 ation of a vast number of substances, the composi 
 tion of which had never been satisfactorily determined. 
 It is rarely within the ability of one man to leave 
 
ME. JOY S ADDEESS. 45 
 
 such a monument of greatness behind him. As long 
 as Chemistry endures, this book will claim a place in 
 every Laboratory, and the name of Berzelius will be 
 mentioned with honor. 
 
 I cannot now speak of his many other contributions 
 to Chemical Science. His last great work was the 
 Examination of Meteorites, in which, without success, 
 he sought to discover some new elements. His age 
 and frequent headaches did not admit of his working 
 in the Laboratory. He complained of frs eyes and of 
 loss of memory. As he could not carry on his prac 
 tical labors, he devoted so much the more time to the 
 theory and literature of the Science. After he became 
 permanent Secretary of the Royal Academy he was 
 successful in introducing yearly reports of the progress 
 of the Sciences. He undertook, as his part, Physics, 
 Mineralogy, Geology, and all branches of Chemistry. 
 
 His first Report, which was made thirty-six years 
 ago, was contained hi a very thin octavo volume. At 
 the present time such a volume could not contain the 
 index of the discoveries made in one year, nor would 
 it, now, be within the power of one mind to gather 
 in and store up the vast harvest which the wide field 
 covered by these Sciences at this day yields. 
 
 When Berzelius visited Germany, in the year 1845, 
 he was everywhere received by the students with ad 
 dresses, processions, and other tokens of honor. His 
 
46 MR. JOY S ADDRESS. 
 
 pupils, already great and renowned, flocked round 
 him, and lie had no occasion to be ashamed of any 
 of them. One day when, in company with Huni- 
 boldt, Mitscherlich, the two Roses, Woehler, Ehren- 
 berg, and von Buch, he drove out to the environs of 
 Berlin, they stopped to examine a Boulder outside 
 the gate. What a group was standing around this 
 erratic mass ! each contributing, of his vast knowledge, 
 to resolve some question connected with its history. 
 Berzelius could give its exact Chemical composition ; 
 Mitscherlich apply his Law of Isomorphism ; Woehler 
 tell whether any of the Elements discovered by him 
 were contained in it ; Henry Rose prescribe the best 
 methods of analysis ; Gustavus Rose measure accurately 
 every crystal; Leopold von Buch explain its Geo 
 logical origin; Ehrenberg find former life in its 
 minutest grains ; while the comprehensive genius of 
 Humboldt could sum up the case for all sides, and pro 
 nounce a decision to which every one would cheerfully 
 submit. A piece of this Boulder was broken off, and 
 carried to Gcettingen by Woehler ; it afterwards found 
 its way to this country, and is now preserved at Am- 
 herst College. 
 
 I have dwelt thus long upon the name and works 
 of Berzelius, because, in speaking of Chemistry, that 
 name and those works are so interwoven with the 
 history of that Science, that neither can be fairly pre- 
 
MK. JOY S ADDRESS. 47 
 
 sented without displaying the other. His influence, 
 too, is not limited to his personal labors, but still lives 
 in the pupils he trained. It is remarkable how many 
 eminent men received their first impulse in his Labor 
 atory. Mitscherlich, Henry and Gustavus Rose, 
 Magnus, Gmelin, Wcehler and Turner were among 
 the number. 
 
 It has been my good fortune to sit at the feet of 
 some of these pupils of Berzelius, and through them I 
 have endeavored to draw inspirations from his instruc 
 tions ; and I feel that I am but paying a small portion 
 of the debt due to a great teacher, by whose lessons 
 I have thus profited, as well as performing an appro 
 priate duty on this public inauguration of my appoint 
 ment to this Chair of Chemistry, in thus rendering 
 my humble homage to his exalted genius. 
 
 Time will not allow me to dwell any longer on the 
 History of Chemistry. The sketch already given 
 shows its very recent origin, and its rapid growth. 
 As an Abstract Science, its progress has been wonder 
 ful. It has almost approached the Mathematics in its 
 definite precision, and it may be said to be daily as 
 suming a more and more strictly Mathematical form. 
 But it is not confined to abstract principles ; it has 
 descended into the daily walks of practical life. Some 
 of its greatest discoveries have become so familiar in 
 their practical applications, that we almost forget 
 
48 MR. JOY S ADDRESS. 
 
 their scientific origin. In the trite allusions to the 
 triumphs of the Steam-engine and of the Electric 
 Telegraph, the obligations we owe to Chemistry are 
 well nigh forgotten. How few are there who, behold 
 ing the beautiful light which sheds its lustre around 
 us this evening, remember that to the labors of men 
 of Science we owe this great social blessing. " When 
 the earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed, 
 and the fruit tree yielding fruit, and GOD had said 
 c Let there be light, 7 and there was light," each ray 
 of sunshine, as it impinged upon tree or flower, was 
 caught up, and held in close embrace, and, with the 
 decay of the plant, was carried down into the earth, 
 changed by slow degrees in form, and there kept a 
 close prisoner, until the genius of man could deliver 
 it from its bondage. These imprisoned sunbeams, 
 after the lapse of ages, are set at liberty at the beck 
 of man, and here we see them gashing forth, from 
 many a jet, turning our night into brilliant day. If 
 Chemistry had contributed no other blessing to the 
 world, this alone would have entitled it to the grati 
 tude of man. 
 
 The practical utility of Abstract Science is not re 
 cognized by the bulk of mankind. They become so 
 familiar with the Material results, that they forget 
 altogether its Scientific origin, and sometimes look 
 with scorn upon studies which are now laying the 
 
MR. JOY S ADDKESS. 49 
 
 foundation for practical good for a future generation. 
 As Baron von Liebig well remarks, " In our schools 
 mere children are now taught truths, the attainment 
 of which has cost immense labor and indescribable 
 effort. They smile when we tell them that an Italian 
 Philosopher wrote an elaborate Treatise to prove that 
 the snow found upon Mount JEtna consists of the same 
 substance as the snow upon the Alps of Switzerland, 
 and that he heaped proof upon proof that both these 
 snows, when melted, yielded water possessed of the 
 same properties. 
 
 " When a school-boy takes a glass full of liquid, and, 
 placing a loose piece of paper over it, inverts the glass 
 without spilling a drop of its contents, he only as 
 tonishes another child by his performance, and yet 
 this is the identical experiment which renders the 
 name of Torricelli immortal. Our children have more 
 correct notions of Nature and Natural phenomena 
 than had Plato ! They may laugh at the errors com 
 mitted by Pliny in his Natural History." Indeed, no 
 Science exhibits more beautifully the harmony be 
 tween Abstract truth and Practical utility ; and there 
 is none in which thorough cultivation is more directly 
 beneficial to the world at large. The Chemists of 
 the world are accumulating a great store of knowl 
 edge, the utility of which, to the human race, can 
 hardly be overrated. Its far-reaching results extend 
 
50 MB. JOY S ADDKESS. 
 
 to almost every article of human use ; and Scientific 
 truths, which now seem without any practical utility, 
 will, without doubt, yield rich fruits to another gener 
 ation. 
 
 But, of all countries where the cultivation of 
 Science would produce the most useful results, our 
 own stands conspicuous. With the natural wealth so 
 richly spread over our wide Empire, in all that the 
 bounteous earth produces, and the hidden stores she 
 carries in her bosom, our countrymen need but the 
 key which Science gives to enable them to unlock 
 their treasure-house. But their impatience for results, 
 their excessively practical character, make them miss 
 the success they might securely attain by pursuing 
 the proper method with patience and perseverance. 
 How many wild schemes of speculation might have 
 been avoided, how many fortunes saved from ruin by 
 a proper application of Scientific knowledge ! No 
 greater benefaction could be bestowed on our coun 
 try than to diffuse everywhere within its borders 
 sound Scientific principles, and any measures tending 
 to this end must contribute, directly and largely, to 
 the public good. Our country needs not only the 
 widest diffusion, but also the highest grade of Science. 
 How can it be attained ? By devising and putting 
 into operation the means adequate to produce the 
 desired result. 
 
ME. JOY S ADDEESS. 51 
 
 The great want of this country is a University 
 where Science can be taught far beyond the usual 
 College course, where the students may be led into 
 the profounder regions of the interpretation of phe 
 nomena, as well as into the practical application of 
 Science to the daily wants of man. 
 
 We present the extraordinary spectacle of a nation 
 possessing unbounded wealth, and yet affording no 
 aid to that very Science to which we are chiefly in 
 debted for our material success. A University is the 
 great educational want of America, In other lands 
 the government extends its protection and aid not 
 only to Elementary Schools and Colleges, but also to 
 Universities. Some part of what is done by govern 
 ments abroad, is effected by private munificence here, 
 at home. All honor to men like Lawrence, Peabody, 
 Astor, Lennox, Nott, Delavan, and to one in our own 
 city, who has erected a massive structure to be devo 
 ted to Science and Art, and which, notwithstanding 
 another corporate name, will ever be known as THE 
 COOPEE INSTITUTE. 
 
 We need more such men to aid us in carrying out 
 the work ; but the founding and building up of a 
 Unversity is beyond the power of individual effort. 
 May we not consider it Providential that Columbia 
 College is. placed in a position which will enable her 
 to confer this great blessing on our land ? Placed at 
 
52 ME. JOY S ADDKESS. 
 
 the great centre of all tlie interests of our country, 
 with the heaving vitality which is around her, and 
 with ample means, we may safely indulge the hope 
 that the great scheme, which her Trustees have form 
 ed, will be carried out to completion, and that, at 
 some not distant day, a great University will be es 
 tablished, which will afford a home for those scholars 
 who are now driven to foreign lands to perfect them 
 selves in Science. But great as the present advantages 
 and the prospective wealth of Columbia may be, the 
 aid of every lover of education will be needed to 
 secure success. I feel confident that this aid will not 
 be wanting, that the dishonor of America will soon 
 be wiped away, and that we shall see a University 
 worthy of the name, and worthy of our country. 
 When that day comes our young men will find other 
 professions besides the few which they can now pur 
 sue, and they will discover, in Science, charms far 
 more attractive than can be found in the frivolous 
 amusements and ignoble dissipations by which they 
 are, now, too often led away. Chemistry, alone, is com 
 prehensive enough to receive all who may wish to ap 
 proach her. The separate fields of Pharmacy, Agri 
 culture, Analysis, Physiology, Technology, and Organic 
 Chemistry, have been but partially explored. We are 
 upon the threshold of discovery in them all, and the 
 progress of Science stands still for want of laborers. 
 
MR. JOY S ADDRESS. 53 
 
 On surveying this vast and ever-spreading field, 
 ever opening, as it is, into new regions with each 
 new accession of knowledge, I am awe-struck, and feel 
 almost rebuked for my presumption in undertaking, 
 single-handed, to introduce the pupils of Columbia 
 College into this boundless domain of Science. I 
 look forward, however, to the better day of the Uni 
 versity, when I shall have the co-operation and sup 
 port of fellow-laborers in this great field, each culti 
 vating his own portion of the domain, each adding to 
 the great common stock of Scientific Truth, and all 
 raising still higher the renown of this venerable In 
 stitution, and rendering it more and more a glory and 
 blessing to our country. 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 OP 
 
 FRANCIS LIEBER, LL. D., 
 
 professor 0f pstofg aitir f olitical j 
 
 Delivered on the 17th of February, 1858. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 The author, requested by the Board of Trustees to prepare a copy 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 73, lino 15, read ANEW for NEW. 
 " < r >. " IT, " is for ARE. 
 
 * 105, " 18, " THEMSELVES for SELVES. 
 
 " 114, " 23, leave out the words, THE MEMORY OF. 
 
 jj.il inanit 
 
 are met together to reverence a great cause or to do 
 homage to noble names, it is a solemn hour, and you 
 have assigned a part in this solemnity to me. I 
 stand here at your behest. No one of you expects 
 that I should laud the sciences which form my par 
 ticular pursuit, above all others. Every earnest schol 
 ar, every faithful student of any branch, is a catholic 
 lover of all knowledge. I would rather endeavor, 
 had I sufficient skill, to raise before you a triumphal 
 arch in honor of the sciences which you have con- 
 
. A T A fl fl 3. 
 
 .5TJIA TO*} Sf 
 
 fo t 8avJM8M3f{T " 81 " "Of 
 
 .TO YHOMHM 3HT .ablOV/ Offt fffo y -/gj,| po .. t I 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 The author, requested by the Board of Trustees to prepare a copy 
 of his inaugural address for publication, has given the substance, 
 and in many places his words, as originally delivered, so far as he 
 remembered them ; but, some of his friends in the Board, having 
 advised him not to restrict himself in the written address, to the 
 limits necessary for one that is spoken, he has availed himself of this 
 liberty, in writing on topics so various and comprehensive, as those 
 that legitimately belong to the branches assigned to him in this 
 institution. The extent of this paper will sufficiently indicate this. 
 
 GENTLEMEN OF THE BOAKD OF TRUSTEES: 
 
 We are again assembled to do honor to the 
 cause of knowledge to that sacred cause of learn 
 ing, inquiry and rearing to learn and to inquire ; of 
 truth, culture, wisdom, of humanity. Whenever men 
 are met together to reverence a great cause or to do 
 homage to noble names, it is a solemn hour, and you 
 have assigned a part in this solemnity to me. I 
 stand here at your behest. No one of you expects 
 that I should laud the sciences which form my par 
 ticular pursuit, above all others. Every earnest schol 
 ar, every faithful student of any branch, is a catholic 
 lover of all knowledge. I would rather endeavor, 
 had I sufficient skill, to raise before you a triumphal 
 arch in honor of the sciences which you have con- 
 
58 ADDKESS 
 
 fided to ray teaching, with some bas-reliefs and some 
 entablatures, commemorating victories achieved by 
 them in the field of common progress ; taking heed 
 however that I do not fall into the error of attempt 
 ing to prove " to the Spartans that Hercules was a 
 strong man." 
 
 Before I proceed to do the honorable duty of this 
 evening, I ask your leave to express on this, the first 
 opportunity which has offered itself, my acknowledg 
 ment for the suffrages which have placed me in the 
 chair I now occupy. You have established a profes 
 sorship of political science in the most populous and 
 most active city in the widest commonwealth of 
 an intensely political character ; and this chair you 
 have unanimously given to me. I thank you for 
 your confidence. 
 
 Sincere, however, as these acknowledgments are, 
 warmer thanks are due to you, and not only my own, 
 but I believe I am not trespassing when I venture to 
 offer them in the name of this assemblage, for the 
 enlargement of our studies. You have engrafted a 
 higher and a wider course of studies on your ancient 
 institution which in due time may expand into a real, 
 a national university, a university of large found 
 ation and of highest scope, as your means may 
 increase and the public may support your endeavors. 
 So be it. 
 
OF MR. LIEBER. 59 
 
 We stand in need of a national university, the 
 highest apparatus of the highest modern civilization. 
 We stand in need of it, not only that we may appear 
 clad with equal dignity among the sister nations of 
 our race, but on many grounds peculiar to ourselves. 
 A national university in our land seems to have be 
 come one of those topics on which the public mind 
 conies almost instinctively to a conclusion, and whose 
 reality is not unfrequently preceded by prophetic 
 rumor. They are whispered about ; their want is 
 felt by all ; it is openly pronounced by many until 
 wisdom and firmness gather the means and resolutely 
 provide for the general necessity. There is at pres 
 ent an active movement of university reform prevail 
 ing in most countries of Europe ; others have insti 
 tutions of such completeness as was never known 
 before, and we, one of the four leading nations, ought 
 not to be without our own, a university, not national, 
 because established by our national government ; 
 that could not well be, and if it were, surely would 
 not be well ; but I mean national in its spirit, in its 
 work and effect, in its liberal appointments and its 
 comprehensive basis. I speak fervently ; I hope, I 
 speak knowingly ; I speak as a scholar, as an Ameri 
 can citizen ; as a man of the nineteenth century in 
 which the stream of knowledge and of education 
 courses deep and wide. I have perhaps a special 
 
60 ADDRESS 
 
 right to urge this subject, for I am a native of that 
 city which is graced with the amplest and the highest 
 university existing. I know, not only what that 
 great institution does, but also what it has effected in 
 tunes of anxious need. When Prussia was humbled, 
 crippled, and impoverished beyond the conception of 
 those that have never seen with their bodily eyes 
 universal destitution and national ruin, there were 
 men left that did not despair, like the foundation 
 walls of a burnt house. They resolved to prepare 
 even in those evil days, even in presence of the vic 
 torious hosts, which spread over the land like an 
 inundation in w^hich the ramified system of police 
 drew the narrow-meshed seine for large and small 
 victims even then to prepare for a time of resusci 
 tation. The army, the taxes, the relation of the peas 
 ant to the landholder, the city government and the 
 communal government all branches of the adminis 
 tration were reformed, and, as a measure of the 
 highest statesmanship, the moral and intellectual ele 
 vation of the whole nation was decided upon. Those 
 men that reformed every branch of government reso 
 lutely invigorated the mind of the entire realm by 
 thorough education, by an all-pervading common 
 school system, which carries the spelling-book and 
 the multiplication table to every hut, by high schools 
 of a learned and of a polytechnical character, and by 
 
OF MR. LIEBER. 61 
 
 universities of the loftiest aim. The universities, still 
 remaining in the reduced kingdom were reformed, 
 and a national university was planned, to concentrate 
 the intellectual rays and to send back the intensified 
 light over the land. It was then that men like Stein, 
 one of the greatest statesmen Europe has produced, 
 and the scholar-statesman William Humboldt his 
 brother Alexander went to our Andes and Niebuhr, 
 the bank officer and historian, and Schleiermacher, 
 the theologian and translator of Plato, and Wolf, the 
 enlarger of philology and editor of Homer, with 
 Buttrnan the grammarian, and Savigny, the greatest 
 civilian of the age, and Fichte and Steffens the philos 
 ophers, these and many more less known to you, but 
 not less active, established the national university in 
 the largest city of Prussia for the avowed purpose of 
 quickening and raising German nationality. All his 
 torians as well as all observing cotemporaries are ^Ly 
 agreed that she performed her part well. In less 
 than seven years that maimed kingdom rose and be 
 came on a sudden one of the leading powers in the 
 greatest military struggle on record, calling for un 
 heard of national efforts, and that great system of 
 education, which rests like a high and long arch on 
 the two buttresses, the common school and the uni 
 versity, served well and proved efficient in the hour 
 of the highest national need ; and, let me add, at that 
 
62 ADDKESS 
 
 period when the matrons carried even their wedding 
 rings to the mint, to exchange them for iron ones 
 with the inscription : Gold I gave for Iron, the halls of 
 that noble university stood mnte. Students, profess 
 ors, all, had gone to the rescue of their country, and 
 Napoleon honored them by calling them in his proc 
 lamations, with assumed contempt, the school-boy sol 
 diers. They fought, as privates and as officers, 
 with the intelligence and pluck of veterans and the 
 dash of patriotic youth, and when they had fought 
 or toiled as soldiers toil, in the day, many of them 
 sang in the nightly bivouac those songs, that swell 
 the breasts of the Germans to this hour. 
 
 We are, indeed, not prostrated like Prussia after 
 the French conquest, but we stand no less in need of 
 a broad national institution of learning and teaching. 
 Our government is a federal union. We loyally ad 
 here to it and turn our faces from centralization, 
 however brilliant, for a time, the lustre of its focus 
 may appear, however imposingly centred power, 
 that saps self-government, may hide for a day the 
 inherent weakness of military concentrated poli 
 ties. But truths are truths. It is a truth that mo 
 dern civilization stands in need of entire countries; 
 and it is a truth that every government, as indeed 
 every institution whatever is, by its nature, exposed 
 to the danger of gradually increased and, at last, 
 
OF MB. LIEBEK. 63 
 
 excessive action of its vital principle. One-sidedness 
 is a universal effect of man s state of sin. Confeder 
 acies are exposed to the danger of sej unction as uni 
 tary governments are exposed to absorbing central 
 power centrifugal power in the one case, centri 
 petal power in the other. That illustrious predecessor 
 of ours, from whom we borrowed our very name, 
 the United States of the Netherlands ailed long with 
 the paralyzing poison of sej unction in her limbs, 
 and was brought to an early grave by it, after having 
 added to the stock of humanity the worshipful names 
 of William of Orange, and de Witt, Grotius, de 
 Ruyter and William the Third.* There is no German 
 
 * Every historian knows that William of Orange, the founder of the 
 Netherlands republic, had much at heart to induce the cities of the new 
 union to admit representatives of the country; but the "sovereign"" cities 
 would allow no representatives to the farmers and landowners, unless noble 
 men, who, nevertheless, were taking their full share in the longest and most 
 sanguinary struggle for independence and liberty ; but the following detail, 
 probably, is not known to many. The estates of Holland and West Fries- 
 land were displeased with the public prayers for the Prince of Orange, which 
 some high-Calvanistic ministers were gradually introducing, in the latter half 
 of the seventeenth century, and in 1663, a decree was issued ordaining to 
 pray first of all " for their noble high mightinesses, the estates of Holland and 
 West Friesland, as the true sovereign, and only sovereign power after God, 
 in this province ; next, for the estates of the other provinces, their allies, and 
 for all the deputies in the assembly of the States General, and of the Council 
 of State." 
 
 " Separatismus," as German historians have called the tendency of the 
 German princes to make themselves as independent of the empire as possible, 
 until their treason against the country reached " sovereignty," has made the 
 political history of Germany resemble the river Rhine, whose glorious water 
 runs out in a number of shallow and muddy streamlets, having lost its im 
 perial identity long before reaching the broad ocean. 
 
64 ADDEESS 
 
 among you that does not sadly remember that his 
 country, too, furnishes us with bitter commentaries 
 on this truth ; and we are not exempt from the dan 
 gers common to mortals. Yet as was indicated just 
 now, the patria of us, moderns, ought to consist in a 
 wide land covered by a nation, and not in a city or 
 a little colony. Mankind have outgrown the ancient 
 city-state. Countries are the orchards and the broad 
 acres where modern civilization gathers her grain 
 and nutritious fruits. The narrow garden-beds of 
 antiquity suffice for our widened humanity, no more 
 
 than the short existence of ancient states. Moderns 
 
 i 
 
 stand in need of nations and of national longevity, 
 for their literatures and law, their industry, liberty, 
 and patriotism ; we want countries to work and 
 write and glow for, to live and to die for. The 
 sphere of humanity has steadily widened, and nations 
 alone can now-a-days acquire the membership of that 
 great commonwealth of our race which extends over 
 Europe and America. Has it ever been sufficiently 
 impressed on our minds how slender the threads are 
 that unite us in a mere political system of states, if 
 we are not tied together by the far stronger cords of 
 those feelings which arise from the consciousness of 
 having a country to cling to and to pray for, and 
 unimpeded land and water roads to move on ? 
 
 Should we, then, not avail ourselves of so well 
 
OF ME, LIEBER. 65 
 
 proved a cultural means of fostering and promoting 
 a generous nationality, as a comprehensive university 
 is known to be? Shall we never have this noble 
 pledge of our nationality ? All Athens, the choicest 
 city-state of antiquity, may well be said to have been 
 one great university, where masters daily met with 
 masters, and shall we not have even one for our whole 
 empire, which does not extend from bay to bay like 
 little Attica, but from sea to sea, and is destined one 
 day to link ancient Europe to still older Asia, and 
 thus to help completing the zone of civilization around 
 the globe ? All that has been said of countries, and 
 nations and a national university would retain its full 
 force even if the threatened cleaving of this broad 
 land should come upon us. But let me not enter on 
 that topic of lowering political reality however 
 near to every citizen s heart, when I am bidden by 
 you to discourse on political philosophy, and it is 
 meet for me not to leave the sphere of inaugural gen 
 eralities. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN ; 
 
 This is the first time I am honored with address 
 ing a New York audience, and even if I could wholly 
 dismiss from my mind the words of the Greek, so 
 impressive in their simplicity : It is difficult to speak 
 to those with whom we have not lived even then I 
 
66 ADDEESS 
 
 could not address you without some misgiving. The 
 topics on which I must discourse, may not be attract 
 ive to some of you, and they cover so extensive a 
 ground, that I fear my speech may resemble the 
 enumeration of the mile-stones that mark the way, 
 rather than the description of a piece of road through 
 cultivated plains or over haughty alps. I, therefore, 
 beg for your indulgence, in all the candor in which 
 this favor can be asked for at your hands. 
 
 It is an error, as common in this country as it is 
 great, that every branch of knowledge, if recognized 
 as important or useful, is for that reason considered a 
 necessary or desirable portion of the college course 
 of studies. It is a serious error, but I do not believe 
 that it was committed by the Trustees when they 
 established my chair. 
 
 College education ought to be substantial and liberal. 
 All instruction given in a generous college ought to 
 aim at storing, strengthening, refining and awakening 
 the head and heart. It ought to have for its object 
 either direct information and positive transmission of 
 knowledge, for the purpose of applying it in the 
 walks of practical life, or in the later pursuits of 
 truth ; or it ought to give the beginnings of knowledge 
 and with them to infuse the longing to enter and tra 
 verse the fields which open before the student from the 
 hill-top to which the teacher has led him ; or it ought 
 
OF MR. L1EBEK. 
 
 to convey to him the method and skill of study the 
 scholar s art to which the ancient Vita Irevis ars 
 longa applies as emphatically as to any other art ; or 
 its tendency ought to be the general cultivation and 
 embellishment of the mind, and the formation of a 
 strong and sterling character, Truth and Truthfulness 
 being the inscription on the mansion of all these 
 endeavors. 
 
 It is readily understood that all teaching must be 
 within the intellectual reach of the instructed, but it 
 is a grave mistake to suppose that nothing should be 
 placed before the pupil s mind, but what he can ac 
 tually comprehend in all its details. Life does not 
 instruct us in this manner ; the bible does not teach 
 us thus. There is a suggestive instruction, which 
 though occasional, is nevertheless indispensable. It 
 consists in thoughts and topics of an evocative char 
 acter, giving a foretaste and imparting hope. The 
 power of stimulation is not restricted, for weal or 
 woe, to definition. Suggestive and anticipating 
 thoughts, wisely allowed to fall on the learner s mind, 
 are like freighted sayings of the poet, instinctively re 
 cognized as pregnant words, although at the moment 
 we cannot grasp their entire meaning. They fill us 
 with affectionate suspicion. Napoleon was a master 
 of the rhetoric of the camp, as Mackintosh calls it 
 speaking of Elizabeth at Tilbury. His proclamations 
 
68 ADDKESS 
 
 to the army are described to have had an elec 
 trifying effect on every soul in the camp, from the 
 calculating engineer to the smallest drummer boy ; 
 yet it is observed that every one of these proclama 
 tions, intended for immediate and direct effect, con 
 tains portions that cannot have been understood by 
 his hosts. Are we then to suppose that these were 
 idle effusions, escaped from his proud heart rather 
 than dictated for a conscious purpose ? He that held 
 his army in his hand as the ancient Caesars hold Vic 
 toria in their palm, always knew distinctly what he 
 was about when his soldiers occupied his mind, and 
 those portions which transcended the common intel 
 lect of the camp had, nevertheless, the inspiriting 
 effect of foreshadowed glory, which the cold com 
 mander wanted to produce for the next day s strug 
 gle. The same laws operate in all spheres, according 
 to different standards, and it is thus that quietening 
 instruction ought not to be deprived of foretokening 
 rays. 
 
 Those branches which I teach are important, it 
 seems, in all these respects and for every one, what 
 ever his pursuits in practical life may be. To me 
 have been assigned the sciences which treat of man 
 in his social relations, of humanity in all its phases 
 in society. Society, as I use the term here, does not 
 mean a certain number of living individuals bound 
 
OF MR. LIEBER. 69 
 
 together by the bonds of common laws, interests, 
 sympathies and organization, but it means these and 
 the successive generations with which they are inter 
 linked, which have belonged to the same egasi Qty and /I 
 whose traditions the living have received. Society is 
 a continuity. Society is like a river. It is easy to say 
 where the Rhine is, but can you say what it is at any 
 given moment ? While you pronounce the word 
 Mississippi, volumes of its waters have rolled into 
 the everlasting sea, and new volumes have rushed 
 into it from the northernmost lake Itaska, and 
 all its vying tributaries. Yet it remains the Missis 
 sippi. While you pronounce the word America, 
 some of your fellow-beings breathe their last, and new 
 ones are born into your society. It remains your 
 society. How else could I, in justice, be called upon 
 to obey laws, made by lawgivers before I was born 
 and who therefore could not, by any theory or con 
 struction, represent me individually ? I was not, and 
 therefore had neither rights nor obligations. But my 
 society existed and it exists still, and those are, until 
 repealed, the laws of my society. Society is not ar 
 bitrarily made up by men, but man is born into 
 society ; and that science which treats of men in their 
 social relations in the past, and of that which has 
 successively affected their society, for weal or woe, is 
 history. Schloezer, one of the first who gave curren- 
 
70 ADDRESS 
 
 cy to the word Statistik, of which we have formed 
 Statistics, with a somewhat narrower meaning, has 
 well said, History is continuous Statistik; Statistik, 
 Histosy-aM-ested at any given period. 
 
 The variety of interests and facts and deeds which 
 history deals with, and the dignity which surrounds 
 this science, for it is the dignity of humanity itself 
 in all its aspirations and its sufferings, give to this 
 branch of knowledge a peculiarly cultivating and en 
 larging character for the mind of the young. 
 
 He that made man decreed him to be a social 
 being, that should depend upon society for the devel 
 opment of his purest feelings, highest thoughts and 
 even of his very individuality, as well as for his ad 
 vancement, safety and sustenance ; and for this purpose 
 He did not only ordain, as an elementary principle, 
 that the dependence of the young of man, and they 
 alone of all mammals, on the protection of the pa 
 rents, should outlast by many years the period of 
 lactation ; and endowed him with a love and instinct 
 of association ; and did not only make the principle 
 of mutual dependence an all-pervading one, acting 
 with greater intensity as men advance ; but He also 
 implanted in the breast of every human being a yearn 
 ing to know what has happened to those that have 
 passed before him, and to let those that will come 
 after him know what has befallen him and what he 
 
OF MK. LIEBER. 71 
 
 may have achieved the love of chronicling and 
 reading chronicles. Man instinctively shows the 
 contintiity of society long before the philosopher 
 enounces it. The very savage honors the old men 
 that can tell of their fathers and of their fathers 
 fathers, and tries his hand at record in the cairn that 
 is to tell a story to his children s children. Why do 
 the lonely Icelanders pass their uninterrupted night 
 of whole months in copying Norman chronicles ? 
 
 As societies rise the desire to know the past as a 
 continuous whole becomes more distinct and the 
 uses of this knowledge become clearer; the desire 
 becomes careful inquiry and collection ; mere Asiatic 
 reception of what is given changes into Greek criti 
 cism; the love to inform future generations becomes 
 a skill to represent, until history, with the zeal of re 
 search, the penetration of analysis, the art and com 
 prehension of representing, and the probity of truth, 
 is seen as the stateliest of all the muses. 
 
 So soon as man leaves the immediate interests of 
 the day and contemplates the past, or plans for future 
 generations and feels a common affection with them, 
 he rises to an ennobling elevation. There is no more 
 nutritious pabulum to rear strong characters upon 
 than History, and all men of action have loved it. 
 The great Chatham habitually repaired to Plutarch 
 in his spare half-hours he had not many and with 
 
72 ADDRESS 
 
 his own hands he prescribed Thucydides as one of 
 the best books for his son to read and re-read in his 
 early youth. The biographer of Pitt tells us that 
 while at Cambridge he was in the habit of copying 
 long passages from Thucydides the better to impress 
 them on his mind, as Demosthenes before him had 
 copied the whole. Thucydides is nourishing food. 
 When we read one of our best historical books, when 
 we allow a Motley to lead us through the struggle of 
 the Netherlands, do we not feel in a frame of mind 
 similar to that which the traveler remembers when he 
 left the noisy streets of Rome, with the creaking wine- 
 carts and the screaming street traffic, and enters the 
 Vatican, where the silent, long array of lasting master- 
 works awaits him ? Even the contemplation of crime 
 on the stage of history has its dignity as its contem 
 plation on the stage of Shakespeare has. The real 
 science and art of history is the child of periods of 
 action. No puny time has produced great historians. 
 Historians grow in virile periods, and if a Tacitus 
 wrote under the corrupt empire it was Rome in her 
 manhood that yet lived in him and made him the 
 strong historian we honor in that great name. His 
 very despondency is great and he wrote his history 
 by the light which yet lingered behind the setting of 
 Roman grandeur. 
 . There are reasons which make the study of history 
 
OF MR. LIEBER. 3 
 
 peculiarly important in our own day and in our own 
 country. Not only is our age graced with a rare 
 array of historians in Europe and in our hemisphere 
 I need hardly mention Mebuhr, Kanke, and Neander, 
 and Guizot, and Sismondi, Hallam, Macaulay, and the 
 noble Grote, and Prescott and Bancroft but, as it 
 always happens when a science is pursued with re 
 newed vigor and sharpened interest, schools have 
 sprung up which in their one-sided eagerness have 
 fallen into serious errors. There was a time when 
 the greatest sagacity of the historian was believed to 
 consist in deriving events of historic magnitude from 
 insignificant causes or accidents, and when the lovers 
 of progress believed that mankind must forget the 
 past and begin entirelvriew. These errors produced 
 in turn their opposites. The so-called historical 
 school sprung up, which seems to believe that no 
 thing can be right but what has been, and that all that 
 has been is therefore right, sacrificing right and jus 
 tice, freedom, truth and wisdom at the shrine of Pre 
 cedent and at the altar of Fact. They forget that 
 in truth theirs is the most revolutionary theory while 
 they consider themselves the conservatives ; for what 
 is new to-day will be fact to-morrow and, according 
 to them, will thus have established its historical right. 
 Another school has come into existence, spread at 
 this time more widely than the other, and consider- 
 
74 ADDRESS 
 
 ing itself the philosophical school by way of excel 
 lence. I mean those historians who seek the highest 
 work of history in finding out a predetermined type 
 of social development in each state and nation and 
 in every race, reducing men to instinctive and invol 
 untary beings and society to nothing higher than a 
 bee-hive. They confound nature and her unchange 
 able types and unalterable periodicity, with the 
 progress and development as well as relapses of 
 associated free agents. In their eyes every series of 
 events and every succession of facts becomes a neces 
 sity and a representative of national predestination. 
 Almost everything is considered a symbol of the mys 
 terious current of nationality, and all .of us have late 
 ly read how the palaces of a great capital were 
 conveniently proclaimed from an imperial throne to 
 be the self-symbolizations of a nation instinctively 
 intent on centralized unity. It is the school peculiar 
 ly in favor with modern, brilliant and not always un 
 enlightened absolutism; for, it strikes individuality 
 from the list of our attributes, and individuality in 
 commodes absolutism. It is the school which strips 
 society of its moral and therefore responsible charac 
 ter, and has led with us to the doctrine of manifest des 
 tiny, as if any destiny of man could be more manifest 
 than that of doing right, above all things, and of being 
 man indeed. The error into which this school has 
 
OF ME. LIEBEE. 75 
 
 relapsed is not dissimilar to that which prevailed 
 regarding ethics with the Greeks before they had 
 clearly separated, in their minds, the laws of nature 
 with their unbending necessity from the moral laws, 
 and which is portrayed with fearful earnestness in 
 the legend of (Edipus. 
 
 Closely akin in historic ethics to the theory of his 
 torical necessity is the base theory of success. We are 
 told, and unfortunately by very many that pretend 
 to take philosophic views, that success proves justice; 
 that the unsuccessful cause proves by the want of 
 success its want of right. It is a convenient theory 
 for the tyrant ; but it is forgotten that if mere jpau- 
 walflincc of power over antagonists constitutes success, 
 and success proves the right of the successful, the 
 robber or the deceiver who can not be 
 
 reached a*e justified. We are not told what length 
 
 p^ 
 of time constitutes success. If there had been a 
 
 Moniteur de Rome in the second century of our era, 
 Christianity must have been represented as a very 
 unsuccessful movement. Nor are we allowed to for 
 get the strong lesson of history that no great idea, 
 no institution of any magnitude has ever prevailed 
 except after long struggles and unsuccessful attempts.* 
 The conscientious teacher must guard the young 
 
 * Connected with this error, again, is the theory of Representative Men, 
 which seems to be in great favor at the present time, and is carried to a re- 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 against the blandishments of these schools ; he must 
 cultivate in the young the delight of discovering the 
 genesis of things, which for great purposes was infused 
 into our souls ; but he must show with lasting effect, 
 that growth in history however well traced, however 
 
 raarkable degree of extravagance even by men who have otherwise acquired 
 deserved distinction. One of the most prominent philosophers of France 
 has gone so far as to say that the leading military genius of an age is its 
 highest representative a position wholly at variance with history and utterly 
 untenable by argument. The philosopher Hegel had said nearly the same thing 
 before him. It would be absurd to say that Hannibal was the representative of 
 his age, yet he was pre-eminently its military genius. Those are the greatest of 
 men that are in advance of their fellow-beings and raise them up to their own 
 height. Whom did Charlemagne represent? The question whom and what 
 did those men represent that have been called representative men, and at 
 what time of their lives were they such, are questions which present them- 
 selm at once at the mention of this term. An English judge who once for 
 all has settled by his decision a point of elementary importance to individual 
 liberty, so that his opinion and his decision now form part and parcd of the 
 very constitution of his country, is to be considered far more a representa 
 tive of the spirit of the English people than Cromwell was when he divided 
 England into military districts, and established a government which broke 
 down the moment he breathed his last. The greater portion of those men 
 who are called representative men have reached their historical eminence by 
 measures consisting in a mixture of violence, compression, and, generally, of 
 fraud ; they cannot, therefore, have represented those against whom the vio 
 lence was used, and little observation is required to know that organized force 
 or a well organized hierarchy can readily obtain a victory over a vastly 
 greater majority that is not organized. The twenty or thirty organized men 
 at Sing-Sing, who keep many hundred prisoners, insulated by silence, in sub 
 mission, cannot be called the representative men of the penitentiary. Nor 
 must it be forgotten that the Bad and the Criminal can be concentrated in 
 a leader and represented by him, just as well as that which is good and sub 
 stantial. Such as the idea of representative men is now floating in the minds 
 of men, it is the result, in a great measure, of that unphilosophical coarseness 
 which places the Palpable, the Vast and the Rapid above the silent and sub 
 stantial genesis of things and ideas, thus leading to the fatal error of regard 
 ing destruction more than growth. Destruction is rapid and violent ; growth 
 is slow and silent. The naturalists have divested themselves of this barba- 
 
OF ME. LIEBER. 
 
 delightful in tracing, however instructive and how 
 ever enriching our associations, is not on that account 
 alone a genesis with its own internal moral necessity, 
 and does not on that account alone have a prescrib 
 ing power for a future line of action. I have dwelt 
 upon this subject somewhat at length, but those will 
 pardon me who know to what almost inconceivable 
 degree these errors are at present carried even by 
 some men otherwise not destitute of a comprehensive 
 grasp of mind. 
 
 If what I have said of the nourishing character 
 inherent in the study of history is true ; if history 
 favors the growth of strong men and is cherished 
 in turn by them, and grows upon their affection 
 as extended experience and slowly advancing years 
 make many objects of interest drop like leaves, one by 
 one ; if history shows us the great connection of 
 things, that there is nothing stable but the Progress 
 ive, and that there is Alfred and Socrates, Marathon 
 and Tours, or, if it be not quaint to express it thus, 
 that there is the microcosm of the whole past in each 
 of us ; and if history familiarizes the mind with the 
 idea that it is a jury whose verdict is not rendered ac 
 cording to the special pleadings of party dogmas, and 
 a logic ^iolentiy wrenched from truth and right 
 then it is obvious that in a moral, practical and intel 
 lectual point of view it is the very science for nascent 
 
T8 ADDKESS 
 
 citizens of a republic. There are not a few among 
 us, who are dazzled by the despotism of a Csesar, ap 
 pearing brilliant at least at a distance did not even 
 Plato set, once, his hopes on Dionysius ? or are mis 
 led by the plausible simplicity of democratic abso 
 lutism, that despotism which believes liberty simply 
 to consist in the irresponsible power of a larger num 
 ber over a smaller, for no other reason, it seems, than 
 that ten is more than nine. All absolutism, whether 
 monarchical or democratic, is in principle the same, 
 and the latter always leads by short transitions to the 
 other. We may go farther ; in all absolutism there is 
 a strong element of communism. The theory of pro 
 perty which Louis the Fourteenth put forth was es 
 sentially communistic. There is no other civil liberty 
 than institutional liberty, all else is but passing sem 
 blance and simulation. It is one of our highest duties, 
 therefore, to foster in the young an institutional spirit, 
 and an earnest study of history shows the inestimable 
 value of institutions. We need not fear in our eager 
 age and country that we may be led to an idolatry of 
 the past history carries sufficient preventives within 
 itself or to a worship of institutions simply because 
 they are institutions. Institutions like the sons of 
 men themselves may be wicked or good*;, but it is true 
 that ideas and feelings, however great or pure, retain 
 a passing and meteoric character so long as they are 
 
OF ME. LIEBEK. 79 
 
 not embodied in vital institutions, and that rights and 
 privileges are but slender reeds so long as they are 
 not protected and kept alive by sound and tenacious 
 institutions ; and it is equally true that an institu 
 tional spirit is fostered and invigorated by a manly 
 study of society in the days that are gone. 
 
 A wise study of the past teaches us social analysis, 
 and to separate the permanent and essential from the 
 accidental and superficial, so that it becomes one of 
 the keys by which we learn to understand better the 
 present. History, indeed, is an admirable training in 
 the great duty of attention and the art of observa 
 tion, as in turn an earnest observation of the present 
 is an indispensable aid to the historian. A practical 
 life is a key with which we unlock the vaults contain 
 ing the riches of the past. Many of the greatest his 
 torians in antiquity and modern times have been 
 statesmen; and Niebuhr said that with his learn 
 ing, and it was prodigious, he could not have un 
 derstood Roman history, had he not been for many 
 years a practical officer in the financial and other de 
 partments of the administration, while we all remem 
 ber Gibbon s statement of himself, that the cap 
 tain of the Hampshire militia was of service to the 
 historian of Rome. This is the reason why free na 
 tions produce practical, penetrating and unravelling 
 historians, for in them every observing citizen par- 
 
80 ADDRESS 
 
 takes, in a manner, of statesmanship. Free countries 
 furnish us with daily lessons in the anatomy of states 
 and society ; they make us comprehend the reality of 
 history. But we have dwelled sufficiently long on 
 this branch. 
 
 As Helicon, where Clio dwelt, looked down in all 
 its grandeur on the busy gulf and on the chaffering 
 traffic of Corinth, so let us leave the summit and 
 walk down to Crissa, and cross the isthmus and enter 
 the noisy mart where the productions of men are 
 exchanged. Sudden as the change may be, it only 
 symbolizes reality and human life. What else is the 
 main portion of history but a true and wise account 
 of the high events and ruling facts which have re 
 sulted from the combined action of the elements of 
 human life ? Who does not know that national life 
 consists in the gathered sheaves of the thousand ac 
 tivities of men, and that production and exchange 
 are at all times among the elements of these activi 
 ties? 
 
 Man is always an exchanging being. Exchange is 
 one of those characteristics without which we never 
 find man, though they may be observable only in 
 their lowest incipiency, and with which we never find 
 the animal, though its sagacity may have reached the 
 highest point. As, from the hideous tattooing of the 
 savage to our dainty adornment of the sea-cleaving 
 
OF ME. LIEBER. 81 
 
 prow or the creations of a Crawford, men always mani 
 fest that there is the affection of the beautiful in them 
 that they are sesthetical beings ; or as they always 
 show that they are religious beings, whether they 
 prostrate themselves before a fetish or bend their 
 knee before their true and unseen God, and the animal 
 never, so we find man, whether Caffre, Phoenician or 
 American, always a producing and exchanging being ; 
 and we observe that this, as all other attributes, steadi 
 ly increases in intensity with advancing civilization. 
 
 There are three laws on which man s material 
 well-being and, in a very great measure, his civiliza 
 tion are founded. Man is placed on this earth ap 
 parently more destitute and helpless than any other 
 animal. Man is no finding animal he must produce. 
 He must produce his food, his raiment, his shelter 
 and his comfort. He must produce his arrow and his 
 trap, his canoe and his field, his road and his lamp. 
 
 Men are so constituted that they have far more 
 wants, and can enjoy the satisfying of them more in 
 tensely, than other animals ; and while these many 
 wants are of a peculiar uniformity among all men, the 
 fitness of the earth to provide for them is greatly di 
 versified and locally restricted, so that men must pro 
 duce, each more than he wants for himself, and 
 exchange their products. All human palates are 
 pleasantly affected by saccharine salts, so much so that 
 
82 ADDRESS 
 
 the word sweet has been carried over, in all languages, 
 into different and higher spheres, where it has ceased 
 to be a trope and now designates the dearest and even 
 the holiest affections. All men understand what is 
 meant by sweet music and sweet wife, because the ma 
 terial pleasure whence the term is derived is universal. 
 All men of all ages relish sugar, but those regions 
 which produce it are readily numbered. This applies 
 to the far greater part of all materials in constant de 
 mand among men, and it applies to the narrowest 
 circles as to the widest. The inhabitant of the popu 
 lous city does not cease to relish and stand in need of 
 farinaceous substances though his crowded streets can 
 not produce grain, and the farmer who provides him 
 with grain does not cease to stand in need of iron or 
 oil which the town may procure for him from a dis 
 tance. With what remarkable avidity the tribes of 
 Negroland, that had never been touched even by the 
 last points of the creeping fibres of civilization, long 
 ed for the articles lately carried thither by Barth and 
 his companions ! The brute animal has no dormant 
 desires of this kind, and finds around itself what it 
 stands in need of. This apparent cruelty, although a 
 real blessing to man, deserves to be made a prominent 
 topic in natural theology. 
 
 Lastly, the wants of men I speak of their material 
 and cultural wants, the latter of which are as urgent 
 
OF ME. LIEBEK. 83 
 
 and fully as legitimate as the former infinitely in 
 crease and are by Providence decreed to increase 
 with advancing civilization ; so that 4r progress ne- 
 cessitates intenser production and quickened exchange. 
 The branch which treats of the necessity, nature, and 
 effects, the promotion and the hindrances of produc 
 tion, whether it be based almost exclusively on appro 
 priation, as the fishery ; or on coercing nature to fur 
 nish us with better and more abundant fruit than she is 
 willing spontaneously to yield, as agriculture ; or in 
 fashioning, separating and combining substances which 
 other branches of industry obtain and collect, as 
 manufacture ; or fm carrying the products from the 
 spot of production to the place of consumption ; and 
 the character which all these products acquire by 
 exchange, as values, with the labor and services for 
 which again products are given in exchange, this di 
 vision of knowledge is called political economy 
 an unfit name ; but it is the name, and we use it. 
 Political economy, like every other of the new sci 
 ences, was obliged to fight its way to a fair acknowl 
 edgment, against all manners of prejudices. The in 
 troductory lecture which archbishop Whately deliv 
 ered some thirty years ago, when he commenced his 
 course on political economy in the university of Ox 
 ford, consists almost wholly of a defense of his sci 
 ence and an encounter with the objections then made 
 
84 ADDRESS 
 
 to it on religious, moral, and almost on every ground 
 that could be made by ingenuity, or was suggested by 
 the misconception of its aims. Political economy fared, 
 in this respect, like vaccination, like the taking of a 
 nation s census, like the discontinuance of witch-trials. 
 The economist stands now on clearer ground. 
 Opponents have acknowledged their errors, and the 
 economists themselves fall no longer into the faults of 
 the utilitarian. The economist indeed sees that the 
 material interests of men are of the greatest import 
 ance, and that modern civilization, in all its aspects, 
 requires an immense amount of wealth, and conse 
 quently increasing exertion and production, but he 
 acknowledges that " what men can do the least with 
 out is not their highest need."* He knows that we 
 are bid to pray for our daily bread, but not for 
 bread alone, and I am glad that those who bade 
 me teach Political Economy, assigned to me also 
 Political Philosophy and History. They teach 
 that the periods of national dignity and highest 
 endeavors have sometimes been periods of want 
 and poverty. They teach abundantly that riches and 
 enfeebling comforts, that the flow of wine or costly 
 tapestry, do not lead to the development of humanity, 
 nor are its tokens ; that no barbarism is coarser than 
 
 * Professor Lushington in his Inaugural Lecture, in Glasgow, quoted in Mo- 
 rell s Hist, and Grit. View of Specul. Phil. London, 1846. 
 
OF MR. LIEBER. 85 
 
 the substitution of gross expensiveness for what is 
 beautiful and graceful ; that it is rnanly character, 
 and womanly soulfulness, not gilded upholstery or 
 fretful fashion that it is the love of truth and justice, 
 directness and tenacity of purpose, a love of right, of 
 fairness and freedom, a self-sacrificing public spirit 
 and religious sincerity, that lead nations to noble 
 places in history ; not surfeiting feasts or conven 
 tional refinement. The Babylonians have tried that 
 road before us. 
 
 But political economy, far from teaching the hoard 
 ing of riches, shows the laws of accumulation and 
 distribution of wealth ; it shows the important truth 
 that mankind at large can become and have become 
 wealthier, and must steadily increase their wealth with 
 expanding culture. 
 
 It is, nevertheless, true that here, in the most active 
 market of our whole hemisphere, I have met, more 
 frequently than in any other place, with an objection 
 to political economy, on the part of those who claim 
 for themselves the name of men of business. They 
 often say that they alone can know anything about 
 it, and as often ask : what is Political Economy good 
 for ? The soldier, though he may have fought in the 
 thickest of the fight, is not on that account the best 
 judge of the disposition, the aim, the movements, the 
 faults or the great conceptions of a battle, nor can 
 
86 ADDKESS 
 
 we call the infliction of a deep wound a profound 
 lesson in anatomy. 
 
 What is Political Economy good for ? It is like 
 every other branch truthfully pursued, good for lead 
 ing gradually nearer and nearer to the truth ; for 
 making men, in its own sphere, that is the vast sphere 
 of exchange, what Cicero calls mansueti, and for 
 clearing more and more away what may be termed the 
 impeding and sometimes savage superstitions of trade 
 and intercourse ; it is, like every other pursuit of po 
 litical science of which it is but a branch, good for 
 sending some light, through the means of those that 
 cultivate it as their own science, to the most distant 
 corners, and to those who have perhaps not even 
 heard of its name. 
 
 Let me give you two simple facts one of com 
 manding and historic magnitude ; the other of appar 
 ent insignificance, but typical of an entire state of 
 things, incalculably important. 
 
 Down to Adam Smith, the greatest statesmanship 
 had always been sought for in the depression of neigh 
 boring nations. Even a Bacon considered it self-evi 
 dent that the enriching of one people implies the 
 impoverishing of another. This maxim runs through 
 all history, Asiatic and European, down to the latter 
 part of the last century. Then came a Scottish pro 
 fessor who dared to teach, in his dingy lecture-room 
 
OF ME. LIEBEK. 8 
 
 at Edinburgh^ contrary to the opinion of the whole 
 world, that every man, even were it but for egotistic 
 reasons, is interested in the prosperity of his neigh 
 bors ; that his wealth, if it be the result of produc 
 tion and exchange, is not a withdrawal of money 
 from others, and that, as with single men so with en 
 tire nations the more prosperous the one so much 
 the better for the other. And his teaching, like that 
 of another professor before him the immortal Gro- 
 tius went forth, and rose above men and nations, 
 and statesmen and kings; it ruled their councils 
 and led the history of our race into new channels ; 
 it bade men adopt the angels greeting : " Peace on 
 earth and good will towards men," as a maxim of 
 high statesmanship and political shrewdness. Thus 
 rules the mind ; thus sways science. There is now 
 no intercourse between civilized nations which is not 
 tinctured by Smith and Grotius. And what I am, what 
 you are, what every man of our race is in the middle 
 of the nineteenth century, he owes it in part to Adam 
 Smith, as well as to Grotius, and Aristotle, and 
 Shakespeare, and every other leader of humanity. 
 Let us count the years since that Scottish profess 
 or, with his common name, Smith, proclaimed his 
 swaying truth, very simple when once pronounced ; 
 very fearful as long as unacknowledged ; a very 
 blessing when in action ; and then let us answer, 
 
88 ADDKESS 
 
 What has Political Economy done for man? We ha 
 bitually dilate on the effect of physical sciences, and 
 especially on their application to the useful arts in 
 modern times. All honor to this characteristic fea 
 ture of our age the wedlock of knowledge and 
 labor ; but it is, nevertheless, true that none of the 
 new sciences have so deeply affected the course of 
 human events as political economy. I am speaking 
 as an historian and wish to assert facts. What I say 
 is not meant as rhetorical fringe. 
 
 The other fact alluded to, is one of those historical 
 pulsations which indicate to the touch of the inquirer, 
 the condition of an entire living organism. When a 
 few weeks ago the widely spread misery in the manu 
 facturing districts of England was spoken of in the 
 British house of lords, one that has been at the helm,* 
 concluded his speech with an avowal that the suffer 
 ing laborers who could find but half days 7 , nay, quar 
 ter days employment, with unreduced wants of their 
 families, nevertheless had resorted to no violence, but 
 on the contrary universally acknowledged that they 
 knew full well, that a factory can not be kept work 
 ing unless the master can work to a profit. 
 
 This too is very simple, almost trivial, when stated. 
 But those who know the chronicles of the medieval 
 
 * Lord Derby, then in the opposition, and since made premier again. 
 
OF MR. LIEBER. 89 
 
 cities, and of modern times down to a period which 
 most of us recollect, know also that in all former days 
 the distressed laborer would first of all have resort 
 ed to a still greater increase of distress, by violence 
 and destruction. The first feeling of uninstructed 
 man, produced by suffering, is vengeance, and that 
 vengeance is wreaked on the nearest object or person ; 
 as animals bite, when in pain, what is nearest within 
 reach. What has wrought this change ? Who, or 
 what has restrained our own sorely distressed popu 
 lation from blind violence, even though unwise words 
 were officially addressed to them, when under similar 
 circumstances in the times of free Florence or Cologne 
 there Avould have been a sanguinary rising of the 
 " wool-weavers," if it is not a sounder knowledge and 
 a correcter feeling regarding the relations of wealth, 
 of capital and labor, which in spite of the absurdities 
 of communism has penetrated in some degree all lay 
 ers of society ? And which is the source whence this 
 tempering knowledge has welled forth, if not Politic 
 al Economy ? 
 
 True indeed, we are told that economists do not 
 agree ; some are for protection, some for free trade. 
 But are physicians agreed ? And is there no science 
 and art of medicine ? Are theologians agreed ? Are 
 the cultivators of any branch of knowledge fully 
 agreed, and are all the beneficial effects of the sci- 
 
90 ADDRESS 
 
 ences debarred by this disagreement of their followers \ 
 But, however important at certain periods the differ 
 ence between protectionists and free-traders may be, 
 it touches, after all, but a small portion of the bulk 
 of truth taught by Political Economy, and I believe 
 that there is a greater uniformity of opinion, and a 
 more essential agreement among the prominent scho 
 lars of this science, than among those of others ex 
 cepting, as a matter of course, the mathematics. ... 
 
 If it is now generally acknowledged that Political 
 Economy ought not to be omitted in a course of su 
 perior education, all the reasons apply with greater 
 force to that branch which treats of the relations of 
 man as a jural being as citizen, and most especially so 
 in our own country, where individual political liberty 
 is enjoyed in a degree in which it has never been en 
 joyed before. Nowhere is political action carried to a 
 greater intensity, and nowhere is the calming effect 
 of an earnest and scientific treatment of politics more 
 necessary. In few countries is man more exposed to 
 the danger of being carried away to the worship of 
 false political gods and to the idolatry of party, than 
 in our land, and nowhere is it more necessary to show 
 to the young the landmarks of political truth, and 
 the essential character of civil liberty the grave and 
 binding duties that man imposes upon himself when 
 he proudly assumes self-government. Nowhere seem 
 
OF MR. LIEBER. 91 
 
 to be so many persons acting on the supposition that 
 we differ from all other men, and that the same 
 deviations will not produce the same calamities, and 
 nowhere does it seem to be more necessary to teach 
 what might well be called political physiology and 
 political pathology. In no sphere of action does it 
 seem to me more necessary than in politics, to 
 teach and impress the truth that " logic without rea 
 son is a fearful thing." Aristotle said : The fellest of 
 things is armed injustice ; History knows a feller thing 
 impassioned reasoning without a pure heart in him 
 that has power in a free country the poisoning of 
 the well of political truth itself. Every youth ought 
 to enter the practical life of the citizen, and every 
 citizen ought to remain through life, deeply impressed 
 with the conviction that, as Vauvernague very nobly 
 said, " great thoughts come from the heart," so great 
 politics come from sincere patriotism, and that with 
 out candid and intelligent public spirit, parties with 
 out which no liberty can exist, will raise themselves 
 into ends and objects instead of remaining mere 
 means. And when the words party, party consistency 
 and party honor are substituted for the word Country, 
 and, as Thucydides has it, when parties use, each its 
 own language, and men cease to understand one anoth 
 er, a country soon falls into that state in which a court 
 of justice would find itself where wrangling plead- 
 
92 ADDKESS 
 
 ers should do their work without the tempering, 
 guiding judge that state of dissolution which is the 
 next step to entire disintegration. Providence has 
 no special laws for special countries, and it is not only 
 true what Talleyrand said : Tout arrive ; but every 
 thing happens over again. There is no truth, short 
 of the multiplication table, that, at some time or 
 other, is not drawn into doubt again, and must be 
 re-asserted and re-proved. 
 
 One of the means to insure the difficult existence 
 of liberty far more difficult than that of absolutism, 
 because of an infinitely more delicate organization 
 is the earnest bringing up of the young in the path 
 of political truth and justice, the necessity of which 
 is increased by the reflection that in our period of 
 large cities, man has to solve, for the first time in his 
 tory, the problem of making a high degree of general 
 and individual liberty compatible with populous 
 cities. It is one of the highest problems of our race, 
 which cannot yet be said to have been solved. 
 
 Political philosophy is a branch of knowledge that 
 ought not only to be taught in colleges ; its funda 
 mental truths ought to be ingrained in the minds of 
 every one that helps to crowd your public schools. 
 Is it objected that political philosophy ranges too 
 high for boyish intellects ? What ranges higher, 
 what is of so spiritual a character as Christianity? 
 
OF ME. LIEBER. 93 
 
 But this lias not prevented the church, at any period 
 of her existence, from putting catechisms of a few 
 pages into the hands of boys and girls, so that they 
 could read. 
 
 We have, however, direct authority for what 
 has been advanced. The Romans in their best pe 
 riod made every school-boy learn by heart the XII 
 Tables, and the XII Tables were the catechism of 
 Roman public and private law, of their constitution 
 and of the proud Jus Quiritium, that led the Roman 
 citizen to pronounce so confidently, as a vox et invo- 
 catio, his Civis Romanus sum in the most distant cor 
 ners of the land, and which the captive apostle col 
 lectedly asserted twice before the provincial officers. 
 Cicero says that when he was a boy, he learned the 
 XII Tables ut carmen necessarium, like an indispens 
 able formulary, a political breviary, and deplores 
 that at the time when he was composing his treatise 
 on the laws, in which he mentions the fact, the 
 practice was falling into disuse. Rome was fast 
 drifting to Csesarean absolutism ; what use was there 
 any longer for a knowledge of fundamental prin 
 ciples ? 
 
 The Romans were not visionary ; they were no 
 theorists ; no logical symmetry or love of system ever 
 prevented them from being straightforward and 
 even stern practical men. They were men of singu- 
 
94 ADDRESS 
 
 lar directness of purpose and language. Abstraction 
 did not suit them well. Those Romans, who loved 
 law and delighted in rearing institutions and building 
 high roads and aqueducts ; who could not only con 
 quer, but could hold fast to, and fashion what they 
 had conquered, and who strewed municipalities over 
 their conquests, which, after centuries, became the 
 germs of a new political civilization; who reared a 
 system of laws which conquered the west and their 
 own conquerors, when the Roman sword had become 
 dull ; and who impressed, even through the lapse of 
 ages, a practical spirit on the Latin Church, which 
 visibly distinguishes it from the Greek ; those Ro 
 mans who declared their own citizens with all the Jus 
 Romanum on them, when once enrolled, the slaves 
 of the general, and subjected them to a merciless 
 whip of iron chains ; those Romans who could make 
 foreign kings assiduous subjects, and foreign hordes 
 fight well by the side of their own veterans, and 
 who could be dispassionately cruel when they thought 
 that cruelty was useful ; those Romans who were 
 practical if there ever was a practical people, bade 
 their schoolmaster to drive the XII Tables into the 
 stubborn minds of the little fellows who, in their 
 turn, were to become the ruling citizens of the 
 ruling commonwealth, and we know, from sculp 
 tural and written records, in prose and metre, that 
 
OF MR. LIEBER. 95 
 
 the magistral means in teaching that carmen necessa- 
 riuin was not always applied to the head alone. 
 
 Let us pass to another authority, though it require 
 a historic bound to John Milton, whose name is 
 high among the names of men, as that of Rome is 
 great among the states of the earth. Milton who 
 wrote as clear and direct prose, as he sang lofty poet 
 ry, who was one of the first and best writers on the 
 liberty of the press against his own party, and who 
 consciously and readily sacrificed his very eyesight 
 to his country Milton says, in his paper on Educa 
 tion, dedicated to Master Hartlib,* that, after having 
 
 * Mr. Evert A. Duyckinck, of this city, whom, while writing out this ad 
 dress, I had asked what he knew of " Master Hartlib," obligingly replied by a 
 note, of which I may be permitted to give the following extract: 
 
 "In Disraeli s Curiosities of Literature, Hartlib is called a Pole. Thomas 
 Wharton, in a note in his edition of Milton s Minor Poems, says Hartlib was 
 a native of Holland, and came into England about the year 1640. Hartlib 
 himself tells us in a letter, dated 1660, (reprinted in Egerton Brydges Curi- 
 osa Literaria, III. 54) that his father was a Polish merchant who founded a 
 church in Pomania, and, when the Jesuits prevailed in Poland, removed to 
 Elbing, to which place his (Samuel Hartlib s) grandfather brought the English 
 company of merchants from Dantzic. It would appear that Hartlib was born 
 at Elbing, for he speaks of his father marrying a third wife (H. s mother) after 
 the removal from Poland proper, which third wife would appear to have been 
 an English woman. Hartlib speaks of his family being of a very ancient 
 extraction in the German empire, there having been ten brethren of the name 
 of Hartlib, some of them Privy Councillors to the Emperor. Hartlib s mer 
 cantile life, I suppose, brought him to England. He was a reformer in Church 
 matters, and became attached to the Parliament. Hartlib, says Wharton, 
 took great pains to frame a new system of education, answerable to the per 
 fection and purity of the new commonwealth. Milton addressed his Treatise 
 on Education to him about 1650. In 1662 Hartlib petitioned Parliament 
 for relief, stating that he had been thirty years and upwards serving the state 
 and specially setting forth the erecting a little academy for the education 
 
96 ADDRESS 
 
 taught sundry other branches in a boy s education, 
 " the next removal must be to the study of politics, to 
 know the beginning, end and reasons of political soci 
 eties, that they (the learners) may not, in a dangerous 
 fit of the commonwealth, be such poor, shaken, un 
 certain reeds, of such a tottering conscience, as many 
 of our great counsellors have lately shown them 
 selves, but steadfast pillars of the state." This preg 
 nant passage ought not to have been written in vain. 
 
 I could multiply authorities of antiquity and 
 modern times, but is not, Rome and Milton, strong 
 enough ? 
 
 A complete course of political philosophy, to 
 which every course, whether in a college or a uni 
 versity, ought to approximate, as time and circum 
 stances permit, should wind its way through the 
 large field of political science somewhat in the fol 
 io wins: manner. 
 
 o 
 
 of the gentry of this nation, to advance piety, learning, morality and other ex 
 ercises of industry, not usual then in common schools. His other services 
 were correspondence with the chief of note of foreign parts, collecting 
 MSS. in all the parts of learning, printing the best experiments of indus 
 try in Husbandry and Manufactures, relieving poor, distressed scholars, 
 both foreigners and of this nation. " 
 
 So far the extract from Mr. Duyckinck s letter. Hartlib was no doubt a Ger. 
 man by extraction and education, and represents a type of men peculiar to the 
 reformation, and of great importance in the cause of advancing humanity- 
 Milton must have felt great regard for this foreigner, but Milton had too en. 
 lightened a mind, and had learned too much in foreign parts, ever to allow a 
 narrowing and provincial self-complacency to become a substitute for enlarg 
 ing and unselfish patriotism. 
 
OF ME. LIEBEE. 97 
 
 We must start from the pregnant fact that 
 each man is made an individual and a social 
 being, and that his whole humanity with all its 
 attributes, moral, religious, emotional, mental, cul 
 tural and industrial, is decreed forever to revolve 
 between the two poles of individualism and socialism, 
 taking the latter term in its strictly philosophical 
 adaptation. Man s moral individualism and the sove 
 reign necessity of his living in society, or the fact that 
 humanity and society are two ideas that cannot even 
 be conceived of, the one without the other, lead to 
 the twin ideas of Right and Duty. Political science 
 dwells upon this most important elementary truth, 
 that the idea of right cannot be philosophically 
 stated without the idea of obligation, nor that of 
 duty without that of right, and it must show how 
 calamitous every attempt has proved to separate 
 them ; how debasing a thing obligation becomes 
 without corresponding rights, and how withering 
 rights and privileges become to the hand that wields 
 the power and to the fellow-being over whom it 
 sways, if separated from corresponding duty and 
 obligation. 
 
 Right and duty are twin brothers ; they are like 
 the two electric flames appearing at the yard-arms 
 in the Mediterranean, and were called by the ancient 
 mariners Castor and Pollux. "When both are visible, 
 
 7 
 
98 ADDKESS 
 
 a fair and pleasant course is expected ; but one alone 
 portends stormy mischief. An instinctive acknowl 
 edgment of this truth makes us repeat with plea 
 sure to this day the old French maxim, Noblesse 
 oblige, whatever annotations history may have to tell 
 of its disregard.* 
 
 That philosopher, whom Dante calls il maestro di 
 color die sanno, and whom our science gratefully 
 acknowledges as its own founder, says that man is 
 by nature a political animal. He saw that man can 
 not divest himself of the State. Society, no matter 
 in how rudimental a condition, always exists, and so 
 ciety considered with reference to rights and duties, 
 to rules to be obeyed, and to privileges to be pro 
 tected, to those that ordain, and those that comply, 
 is the political state. Government was never voted 
 into existence, and the state originates every day 
 anew in the family. God coerces man into society, 
 and necessitates the growth of government by that 
 divinely simple law, which has been alluded to before, 
 and consists in making the young of man depend 
 upon the parents for years after the period of lacta 
 tion has ceased. As men and society advance, the 
 greatest of institutions the State increases in inten- 
 
 * In this sense at least Noblesse oblige was often taken, that feudal privi 
 leges over feudal subjects involved obligations to them, although it meant 
 originally the obligations due to him who bestowed the nobility. 
 
OF MR. LIEBEK. 99 
 
 sity of action, and when humanity falters back, the 
 State, like the function of a diseased organ, becomes 
 sluggish or acts with ruinous feverishness. In this 
 twinship of right and duty lies the embryonic gene 
 sis of liberty, and at the same time the distinction 
 between sincere and seasoned civil liberty, and the 
 wild and one-sided privilege of one man or a class ; or 
 the fantastic equality of all in point of rights with 
 out the steadying pendulum of mutual obligation. 
 
 This leads us to that division which I have called 
 elsewhere Political Ethics, in which the teacher will 
 not fail to use his best efforts, when he discourses on 
 patriotism that ennobling virtue which at times has 
 been derided, at other times declared incompati 
 ble with true philosophy or with pure religion. He 
 will not teach that idolatrous patriotism which in 
 scribes on its banner, Our country, right or wrong, 
 but that heightened public spirit, which loves and 
 honors father and mother, and neighbors, and coun 
 try ; which makes us deeply feel for our country s 
 glory and its faults; makes us willing to die, and, 
 what is often far more difficult, to live for it; that 
 patriotism which is consistent with St. Paul s com 
 mand: Honor all men, and which can say with 
 Montesquieu, " If I knew anything useful to my coun 
 try but prejudicial to Europe or mankind, I should 
 consider it as a crime ;" that sentiment which made 
 
100 ADDRESS 
 
 the Athenians reject the secret of Themistocles, be 
 cause Aristides declared it very useful to Athens, 
 but very injurious to Sparta and to the other Greeks. 
 The Christian citizen can say with Tertullian, Civita-s 
 nostra totus mmidus, and abhors that patriotism 
 which is at best bloated provincialism, but he 
 knows, too, that that society is doomed to certain 
 abasement in which the indifference of the ~blase 
 is permitted to debilitate and demoralize public 
 sentiment. The patriotism of which we stand as 
 much in need as the ancients, is neither an amiable 
 weakness, nor the Hellenic pride. It is a positive 
 virtue demanded of every moral man. It is the 
 fervent love of our own country, but not hatred of 
 others, nor blindness to our faults and to the rights 
 or superiorities of our neighbors. 
 
 We now approach that branch of our science 
 which adds, to the knowledge of the " end and rea 
 sons of political societies," the discussion of the means 
 by which man endeavors to obtain the end or ought 
 to obtain it ; in one word, to the science of govern 
 ment, and a knowledge of governments which exist 
 and have existed. The " end and reasons of political 
 societies" involve the main discussion of the object 
 of the State, as it is more clearly discerned with ad 
 vancing civilization, the relation of the State to the 
 family, its duties to the individual, and the necessary 
 
OF ME. LIEBEE. 101 
 
 limits of its power. Protection, in the highest sense 
 of the word,* both of society, as a whole, and of the 
 component individuals, as such, without interference, 
 and free from intermeddling, is the great object of 
 the civilized State, or the State of freemen. To this 
 portion of our science belong the great topics of the 
 rights as well as the dependence of the individual 
 citizen, of the woman and the child ; of primordial 
 rights and the admissibility or violence of slavery, 
 which, throughout the whole course of history where- 
 ever it has been introduced, has been a deciduous 
 institution. The reflection on the duties of the State 
 comprehends the important subjects of the necessity 
 of public education (the common school for those 
 who are deprived of means, or destitute of the desire 
 to be educated ; and the university, which lies beyond 
 the capacity of private means); of the support of those 
 who cannot support themselves (the pauper, and the 
 poor orphans and sick) ; of intercommunication and 
 intercommunion (the road and the mail) ; of the pro 
 motion of taste and the fine arts, and the public sup 
 port of religion, or the abstaining from it ; and the 
 duty of settling conflicting claims, and of punishing 
 
 * That I do not mean by this material protection only, but the protection 
 of all interests, the highest no less so than the common ones, of society as 
 a unit, as well as of the individual human being, will be well known to the 
 reader of my Political Ethics. I do by no means restrict the meaning of 
 Protection to personal security, nor do I mean by this term something that 
 amounts to the protection of an interest in one person to the injury of others. 
 
102 ADDRESS 
 
 those that infringe the common rules of action, with 
 the science and art of rightful and sensible punition, 
 or, as I have ventured to call this branch, of penology. 
 The comprehensive apparatus by which all these 
 objects, more or less dimly seen, according to the 
 existing stage of civil progress, are intended to be 
 obtained, and by which a political society evolves its 
 laws, is called government. I generally give at this 
 stage a classification of all governments, in the present 
 time or in the past, according to the main principles 
 on which they rest. This naturally leads to three 
 topics, the corresponding ones of which, in some 
 other sciences, form but important illustrations or 
 constitute a certain amount of interesting knowledge, 
 but which in our science constitute part and par 
 cel of the branch itself. I mean a historical sur 
 vey of all governments and systems of law, Asiatic 
 or European ; a survey of all political literature as 
 represented by its prominent authors, from Aristotle 
 and Plato, or from the Hindoo Menu, down to St. 
 Simon or Calhoun a portion of the science which 
 necessarily includes many historians and theologians 
 on the one hand, such as Mariana, De Soto and 
 Machiavelli, and on the other hand statesmen that 
 have poured forth wisdom or criminal theories in 
 public speech, Demosthenes or Webster, Chatham, 
 Burke, Mirabeau or Robespierre and St. Juste. And 
 
OF ME. LEEBER. 103 
 
 lastly, I mean that division of our science which in 
 deed is, properly, a subdivision of the latter, but suf 
 ficiently important and instructive to be treated 
 separately a survey of those model states which 
 political philosophers have from time to time imag 
 ined, and which we now call Utopias, from Plato s 
 Atlantis to Thomas More s Utopia, Campanella s Civi- 
 tas Solis or Harrington s Oceana to our socialists, or 
 Shelley s and Coleridge s imaginings and the hallucina 
 tions of Comte. They are growing rarer and, proba 
 bly, will in time wholly cease. Superior minds, at any 
 rate, could feel stimulated to conceive of so-called phi 
 losophical republics, in ages only when everything 
 existing in a definite form languages, mythologies, 
 agriculture and governments- was ascribed to a cor 
 respondingly definite invention, or, at times, to an 
 equally definite inspiration, and when society was 
 not clearly conceived to be a continuity ; when far 
 less attention was paid to the idea of progress, which 
 is a succession of advancing steps, and to the historic 
 genesis of institutions ; and when the truth was not 
 broadly acknowledged that civilization, whether po 
 litical or not, cannot divest itself of its accumulative 
 and progressive character. 
 
 This Utopiology, if you permit me the name, will 
 include those attempts at introducing, by sudden and 
 volcanic action, entirely new governments resulting 
 
104 ADDEESS 
 
 from some fanatical theory, such as the common 
 wealth of the anabaptists in Germany, or the at 
 tempts of carrying out Rousseau s equalitarian hatred 
 of representative government, by Marat and Callot 
 d Herbois. They have all been brief and bloody. 
 
 When the teacher of political philosophy discourses 
 on the first of these three divisions he will not omit 
 to dwell on the communal governments and the later 
 almost universal despotism, of Asia, which reduces 
 the subject, both as to property and life, to a tenant 
 at will ; he will dwell on the type of the city-state, 
 prevailing in Greek and Roman antiquity, and the 
 strong admixture of communism in those states, espe 
 cially in the Greek ; he will show how that religion, 
 whose founder proclaimed that his kingdom is not of 
 this world, nevertheless affected all political organiza 
 tion far more than aught else has done, because, more 
 than anything else, it affected the inner man, and that, . 
 in one respect, it intensified individualism, for it exalted 
 the individual moral character and responsibility. In 
 dividual duties and individual rights received greater 
 
 
 importance, and Christianity leveled all men before an 
 omniscient Judge and a common Father. From the 
 time when the worshiped emperor of Rome decreed 
 that the Christians, then confounded with the Jews, 
 should depart from Italy, because, as Suetonius says, 
 they were Christo impulsore tumultuantes, the Ro- 
 
OF ME. LEEBER. 105 
 
 mans perceived that there was that in the Christian 
 which made him bow before a higher authority than 
 that of the Caesars. " Christ impelling them, they 
 are disturbers " yet they obeyed the law, as Pliny, 
 the governor, writes to his friend and emperor, only 
 they could not be induced to strew the sacred meal 
 on the altar of Jove, and Christianity wrought on in 
 the breasts of men, until Julian loses the battle, and, 
 as tradition at least says, exclaims in dying: "Oh 
 Galilean, thou hast conquered !" 
 
 The teacher will dwell on that type of government 
 which succeeded and is the opposite to the ancient 
 city-state the feudal system with its graduated 
 and subdivided allegiance ; and he will show how at 
 last the period of nationalization arrived for govern 
 ments and languages, and national governments, with 
 direct and uniform allegiance, at last developed 
 and became the accompaniments of mod 
 ern civilization ; when real states were formed, com 
 pact governments extending over large territories. 
 The ancients had but one word for state and city ; 
 the mediaeval government is justly called a mere sys 
 tem (the feudal system) ; the moderns have states, 
 whether unitary or confederated does not affect this 
 point. 
 
 When an account is given of the imaginary gov 
 ernments, which the greater or lesser philosophers 
 
106 ADDRESS 
 
 have constructed as ideal polities, attention must be 
 directed to the striking fact that all Utopists, from 
 Plato to our times, have been more or less commu 
 nists, making war upon money, although so shrewd and 
 wise a man as Thomas More was among them ; and 
 that most of these writers, even Campanella, though 
 a priest of the catholic church, and all societies in 
 which communism has been carried out to any extent, 
 have made light of monogamic wedlock, or have open 
 ly proclaimed the community or a plurality of wives.* 
 
 * Auguste Comte, who was generally considered the most serious and 
 most able atheist, yet known in the annals of science, as long as his Positive 
 Philosophy was the only work that attracted attention, makes one of the 
 exceptions. In his Catechism of Positive Religion, which belongs to the 
 Utopian literature, proclaiming the regeneration and the reconstruction of all 
 human society, and covering it with the aegis of a paper-system rubricked 
 according to a priestly socialistic Caesarism, nevertheless acknowledges mono 
 gamy, and individual property in a considerable degree. The work, however, 
 amply makes up for these omissions, by an incredible amount of inane vaga 
 ries, self-contradictions and that apotheosis of absolutism, "organizing" all 
 things and allowing inherent life nowhere, which is the idol of Gallican sociolo 
 gists, as the fallen Romans burnt incense to the images of their emperors even 
 while living, or rather as long as they lived ; for, so soon as the emperor was 
 dead, his memory was often senatorially cursed, and his images were decreed 
 to be broken. Power was the only thing left, when the introduction of the 
 many thousands of gods, from the conquered countries, neutralized all sense 
 of religion, and power was worshiped accordingly. The Suetoniana of the 
 nineteenth century are not wholly dissimilar. 
 
 Nothing has probably ever shown so strikingly the inherent religious char 
 acter of man as Comte s apotheosis of atheism, and his whole "catechism, 
 sprinkled as it is with prayers to the " supreme being," which being, to be 
 sure, is void of being and cannot, therefore, very well be possessed of supre 
 macy. 
 
 From time to time great men have declared what they considered the great 
 est of evils. Aristotle says, "The fellest of things is armed injustice." 
 Bacon declares that the greatest of evils is the apotheosis of error; but, 
 somehow, men seem always to contrive to prove that there may be still 
 greater evils. 
 
OF MR. LIEBEB. 107 
 
 We have our protestant counterpart to Campanella 
 in the Eev. Martin Madan, the author of Thelyp- 
 thora, a Defense of a Plurality of Wives. Hostility 
 to individualism in property has generally been 
 accompanied by a hostility to exclusive wedlock, in 
 antiquity and modern times, and I believe I am not 
 wrong when I add, very often by a leaning to pan 
 theism, in the sphere of religion. But the Utopists 
 are* not the only communists. Paley, who would have 
 shrunk from being called a communist, nevertheless 
 explains individual property on the mere ground of 
 his " expediency" and in a manner which the avowed 
 communists of our times Quinesset and Proudhon 
 have been willing to accept, only they differ as to 
 the expediency, and why not differ on that ? Paley 
 and the larger portion of modern publicists main 
 tained, and even Webster asserted on a solemn occa 
 sion,* that property is the creature of government. 
 But government is the agent of society, so that, if the 
 same society should see fit to change the order of 
 things, and to undo its own doing, no objection can 
 be made on the ground of right and justice. Rous 
 seau says, indeed, that the first fence erected to sep 
 arate land from the common stock, brought misery 
 
 * It was the perusal of this assertion by Mr. Webster, in a speech in Ohio, 
 in 1828, which first led the author to reflections which were ultimately given 
 in his Essays on Labor and Property. He totally denies that property is the 
 creature of government. 
 
108 ADDKESS 
 
 upon men, and Proudhon formulated this idea when 
 he said : Property is theft ; but the point of starting 
 is common to all. 
 
 The radical error of the communist consists in his 
 exclusive acknowledgment of the principle of social 
 ism, and that he endeavors to apply it even to that 
 which has its very origin and being in individualism 
 to property. Man can not exist without producing ; 
 production always presupposes appropriation ; both 
 are essentially individual, and where appropriation 
 consists in occupation by a society as a unit, this is 
 no less exclusive or individual property, with refer 
 ence to all other societies, than the property held by 
 a single man. The communist does not seem to see 
 the absurdity of demanding common property for all 
 men in France, upon what he considers philosophic 
 grounds, yet excluding the rest of mankind from that 
 property. The radical error of the individualist, on 
 the other hand, is, that he wholly disavows the 
 principle of socialism, and, generally, reasons on the 
 unstable and shaking ground of expediency alone. 
 He forgets that both, individualism and socialism, are 
 true and ever-active principles, and that the very 
 idea of the state implies both ; for, the state is a so 
 ciety, and a society consists of individuals who never 
 lose their individual character, but are united by 
 common bonds, interests, organizations and a common 
 
OF ME. LIEBEK. 109 
 
 continuity. A society is not represented by a mass 
 of iron in which the original particles of the ore have 
 lost all separate existence by refinement and smelt 
 ing ; nor is it represented by a crowd of units acci 
 dentally huddled together. It is on the principle of 
 socialism alone that it can be explained why I may 
 be forced, and ought to be so, to pay my share toward 
 the war which I may loathe, but upon which my 
 state, my society has resolved. How will you ex 
 plain that charity is no longer left wholly to depend 
 upon individual piety, but that the government takes 
 part of my property in the shape of a poor-tax, to sup 
 port the indigent ? or how is the potent right of roads 
 to be explained ? that I must pay toward common 
 education when I may educate my children in a pri 
 vate school or may have none at all to be educated ? 
 or toward a scientific expedition, or to support the 
 administration of justice, when I may not have had 
 a single law-suit or when I might think it more con 
 venient to return to the primitive age of private re 
 venge ? On what principle do you prohibit infamous 
 books ? Why must I bear the folly of my legislators 
 or submit to the consequences of a crude diplomatist ? 
 Why are we proud of the willing submission of the 
 minority after a passionately-contested presidential 
 election? The principle of socialism is interwoven 
 with our whole existence ; for, it is a social existence. 
 
110 ADDEES8 
 
 How, again, can we explain the very idea of rights, 
 the protection of man, all the contents of all the bills 
 of rights the liberty of the press or communion, the 
 freedom of worship or the right we have to slay the 
 sheriff that breaks into our house with an illegal 
 warrant, if not on the ground of individualism ? All 
 taxation is founded on socialism, inasmuch as society 
 takes by force, actual or threatened, part of my own, 
 and on individualism, because it is proportioned ac 
 cording to the capacity of the individual to pay and 
 takes a lawful portion only. When the Athenian 
 council decreed a liturgy, there was socialism indeed 
 pretty strongly prevailing. The principle of individ 
 ualism is everywhere, for our existence is, also, an indi 
 vidual one. "We shudder instinctively at the idea of 
 losing our individuality, and our religion teaches that 
 we must take it with us beyond the limits of time. 
 Even a heathen, a Hindoo law-giver, said long be 
 fore our era : " Single is each man born ; single he 
 dieth; single he receiveth the reward of his good, 
 and single the punishment for his evil deeds." 
 
 The two principles of humanity, individualism and 
 socialism, show themselves from the very beginning 
 in their incipient pulsations, and as mankind advance 
 they become more and more distinct and assume 
 more and more their legitimate spheres. Individu 
 alism is far more distinct with us than in anti- 
 
OF MR. LIEBER. Ill 
 
 quity, in property and in the rights of man, with all 
 that flows from them; and socialism is far more 
 clearly developed with us than with the Greeks or 
 Koinans, in primary education, charity, intercommuni 
 on by the liberty of the press or the mail, the punitary 
 systems, sanitary measures, public justice and the many 
 spheres in which the united private wants have been 
 raised to public interests, and often passed even into 
 the sphere of international law. Christianity, which, 
 historically speaking, is a co-efficient of the highest 
 power of nearly all the elements of humanity and 
 civilization, has had an intensifying effect on individu 
 alism as well as on socialism. There is, perhaps, no 
 more striking instance of a higher degree of individu 
 alism and socialism developed at the same time, than 
 in the administration of penal justice, which always 
 begins with private revenge and gradually becomes 
 public justice, when the government obliges every 
 one to pay toward the punishment of a person that has 
 directly injured only one other individual. Yet indi 
 vidualism is more developed in this advanced adminis 
 tration of justice, inasmuch as it always pronounces 
 clearer and clearer, and more and more precautions 
 are taken, that the individual wrong-doer alone shall 
 suffer. There is no atonement demanded, as was the 
 case with the Greeks, but plain punishment for a 
 proved wrong, so that, if the crime is proved but not 
 
112 ^ ADDKESS 
 
 the criminal, we do not demand, on the ground of 
 socialism, the suffering of some one, which the Greeks 
 frequently did. 
 
 Act on individualism alone, and you would reduce 
 society to a mere crowd of egotistical units, far be 
 low the busy but peaceful inmates of the ant-hill; 
 act on socialism alone, and you reduce society to 
 loathsome despotism, in which individuals would 
 be distinguished by a mere number, as the in 
 mates of Sing Sing. Despotism, of whatever name, 
 is the most equalitarian government. The communist 
 forgets that communism in property, as far as it can 
 exist in reality, is a characteristic feature of low bar 
 barism. Herodotus tells us what we find with exist 
 ing savages. Mine and Thine in property and 
 marriage is but dimly known by them. The com 
 munist wants to " organize," as he calls it, but in fact 
 to disindividualize everything, even effort and labor, 
 and a garden of the times of Louis XV., in which 
 the ruthless shears have cramped and crippled every 
 tree into a slavish uniformity, seems to delight his 
 eye more than a high forest, with its organic life and 
 freedom. Hobbes, who, two centuries ago, passed 
 through the whole theory of all-absorbing power con 
 veyed to one man by popular compact, which we now 
 meet with once more in French Csesarism, defined 
 religion as that superstition which is established by 
 
OF MR. LIEBER. 113 
 
 government, and we recollect how closely allied all 
 despotism is to communism. The highest liberty 
 that civil freedom which protects individual humanity 
 in the highest degree, and at the same time provides 
 society with the safest and healthiest organism through 
 which it obtains its social ends of protection and his 
 toric position may not inaptly be said to consist 
 in a due separation and conjunction of individualism 
 and socialism.* 
 
 One more remark. It is a striking fact that the 
 old adage, all extremes meet, has been illustrated by 
 none more forcibly than by the socialists ; for the 
 most enthusiastic socialists of France, America and 
 Germany have actually come to the conclusion, that 
 there need be and ought to be no government at 
 all among men truly free, except, indeed, as one of 
 
 * It is for these reasons that the new term sociology seems to be inappropri 
 ate. Years ago it suggested itself to the author, when he desired to find a term 
 more comprehensive and more compact than that of political philosophy, but he 
 soon discarded it. If those French writers adopt it, in whose theories the idea 
 of society absorbs almost all individualism, it is consistent. With them society, 
 or the government which is its agent, whether monarchical or republican, is ex 
 pected and demanded to provide for everything, to organize all relations, and 
 to do all things that can possibly be done by the government ; but it is to be 
 regretted that men like Lord Brougham have adopted the term. The national 
 society ought not to be the all-absorbing one, nor is the jural society the only 
 important society to which the individual of our race belongs. We belong 
 to societies of great importance, which are narrower than the State, and to 
 others which extend far beyond it, as is sufficiently shown by the religious 
 society or church, the economical society or society of production and ex 
 change, the society of comity, the society of letters and science (for instance, 
 in Germany or that which covers England and the United States), and the 
 international society embracing all the Cis-Caucasian people. 
 8 
 
114 ADDRESS 
 
 our own most visionary socialists naively adds, for 
 roads and some such things. For them Aristotle 
 discovered in vain that : Man is by nature a political 
 animal. " Leave them and pa$s on." 
 
 The political philosopher will now take in hand, 
 as a separate topic, our own polity and political 
 existence ; and this will lead to our great theme, to 
 a manly discussion of Civil Liberty and Self-Govern 
 ment. We are here in the peristyle of a vast temple, 
 and I dare not enter it with you at present, for fear 
 that all the altars and statues and votive tablets of 
 humanity, with all the marbled records of high mar 
 tyrdom and sanguinary errors, would detain us far 
 beyond the midnight hour. It is our American 
 theme, and we, above all men, are called upon to 
 know it well, with all the aspirations, all the duties 
 and precious privileges, all the struggles, achieve 
 ments, dangers and errors,, all the pride and humilia 
 tion, the checks and impulses, the law and untrameled 
 action, the blessings and the blood, the great realities, 
 the mimicry and licentiousness, the generous sacri 
 fices and the self-seeking, with all these memories and 
 actualities all wound up in the memory, of that one 
 word Liberty. 
 
 And now the student will be prepared to enter 
 upon that branch which is the glory of our race in 
 modern history, and possibly the greatest achieve- 
 
OF ME. LIEBER. 115 
 
 inent of combined judgment and justice, acting under 
 the genial light of culture and religion on Interna 
 tional Law, that law which has gathered even the 
 ocean under its foldiX The ancients knew it not in 
 their best time ; and life and property, once having 
 left the shore, were out of the pale of law and justice. 
 Even down to our Columbus, the mariner stood by 
 the helm with his sword, and watched the compass 
 in armor. 
 
 Political science treats of man in his most import 
 ant earthly phase ; the State is the institution which 
 has to protect or to check all his endeavors, and, in 
 turn, reflects them. It is natural, therefore, that a 
 thorough course of this branch should become, in a 
 great measure, a delineation of the history of civiliza 
 tion, with all the undulations of humanity, from that 
 loose condition of men in which Barth found many 
 of our fellow-beings in Central Africa, to our own 
 accumulated civilization, which is like a rich tapestry, 
 the main threads of which are Grecian intellectuality, 
 Christian morality and trans-mundane thought, Ro 
 man law and institutionality, and Teutonic individual 
 independence, especially developed in Anglican lib 
 erty and self-government. 
 
 Need I add that the student, having passed through 
 these fields and having viewed these regions, will be 
 the better prepared for the grave purposes for which 
 
116 ADDRESS OF MR. LIEBER. 
 
 this country destines him, and as a partner in the 
 great commonwealth of self-government? If not, 
 then strike these sciences from your catalogue. It is 
 true, indeed, that the scholar is no consecrated priest 
 of knowledge, if he does not love it for the sake of 
 knowledge. And this is even important in a prac 
 tical point of view ; for all knowledge, to be usefully 
 applied, must be far in advance of its application. It 
 is like the sun, which, we are told, causes the plant 
 to grow when he has already sunk below the horizon ; 
 yet I acknowledge without reserve, for all public 
 instruction and all education, the token which I am in 
 the habit of taking into every lecture room of mine, 
 to impress it ever anew on my mind and on that of 
 my hearers, that we teach and learn : 
 
 WON SCHOLJ3 SED VITLE,* VITJE UTRIQUE. 
 
 * Seneca. 
 
MATHEMATICS: 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 CHARLES DAYIES, LL. D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS IN COLUMBIA COLLEGE, 
 
 C \t lUtuo, finipap, Eitb Em 
 
 OK 
 
 MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE, 
 
 February llth, 1858. 
 
ADDRESS, 
 
 THE first, and surely the most difficult duty 
 assigned to me by the Board of Trustees, is that 
 of explaining to a popular audience the nature of 
 Mathematical Science the forms of its language 
 its uses as a means of mental training and develop 
 ment its value as the true basis of the practical 
 the sources of knowledge which it opens to the mind 
 and the place which it should occupy in a justly bal 
 anced system of Collegiate instruction. 
 
 The term Mathematics, as used by the ancients, em 
 braced every known Science and was also applicable 
 to all other branches of Knowledge. Subsequently, it 
 was restricted to those more difficult subjects which 
 require continuous attention, severe study, patient 
 investigation and exact reasoning; and such subjects 
 were called Disciplinal, or Mathematical. 
 
 Mathematics, as a science, is conversant about the 
 laws of Numbers and Space. The two abstract quan 
 tities, Number and Space, are the only subjects of 
 Mathematical Science. The laws which are evolved in 
 the processes employed in searching out the elements 
 
120 ME. DAVIES* ADDRESS. 
 
 of these abstract quantities, in discussing their rela 
 tions, and in framing a proper language by means of 
 which these relations can be recorded and a knowl 
 edge of them communicated, constitute the Science 
 of Mathematics. The faculties of the mind chiefly 
 employed in the cultivation of this Science are sim 
 ply, the apprehension, the judgment and the reason 
 ing faculty. 
 
 The term quantity, applicable both to number and 
 space, embraces but eight classes of units : 1st, Ab 
 stract Units ; 2d, Units of Currency ; 3d, Units of 
 Length ; 4th, Units of Surface ; 5th, Units of Vol 
 ume ; 6th, Units of Weight ; 7th, Units of Time ; 
 and 8th, Units of Angular Measure. 
 
 The laws which make up the Science of Mathema 
 tics are established in a series of logical propositions, 
 deduced from a few self-evident notions of these uni 
 ties, which are all referred to number and space. All 
 the definitions and axioms, and all the truths deduced 
 from them, by processes of reasoning, are therefore 
 traceable to these two sources. 
 
 In mathematics, names imply the existence of the 
 things which they name, and the definitions of those 
 names express attributes of the things. Hence, all 
 definitions do, in fact, rest on the intuitive inference 
 that things corresponding to the words defined have a 
 conceivable existence as subjects of thought, and do, or 
 
MR. DAVIES ADDKESS. 121 
 
 may have, proximatively, an actual existence. Every 
 definition of this class is a tacit assumption of some 
 proposition, which is expressed by means of the defini 
 tion, and which gives to such definition its importance. 
 
 The axioms of Geometry are intuitive inductions ; 
 that is, they are perfectly conceived by a single pro 
 cess of the mind, without the intervention of other 
 ideas, the moment the facts on which they depend 
 are apprehended. When we say, " A whole is equal 
 to the sum of all its parts," or, " A whole is greater 
 than any of its parts," the mind immediately refers 
 to a single thing, divided into parts; it then com 
 pares the whole thing with all its parts, or the 
 whole thing with some of its parts ; and then infers, 
 by a process of generalization, that what is true of 
 one thing and its parts is also true of every other 
 thing and its parts : so that these axioms, however 
 self-evident, are still generalized propositions, and so 
 far of the inductive kind, that, independently of expe 
 rience, they would not present themselves spontane 
 ously to the mind. 
 
 The pure mathematics being based on definitions 
 and axioms, as premises, all its truths are established 
 by processes of deductive reasoning ; hence, it is 
 purely a deductive science. If all the connections 
 between the minor and major premises were obvi 
 ous to the senses, or as evident as the truth, "A 
 
122 MR. DAVIES ADDRESS. 
 
 whole is equal to the sum of all its parts," there 
 would be no necessity for trains of reasoning, and 
 deductive science would not exist. Trains of rea 
 soning are necessary for extending the definitions 
 and axioms to new cases ; and there is no logical 
 test of truth, in the whole range of mathematical 
 science, except in the conformity of the conclusions 
 to the definitions and axioms, or to such known prin 
 ciples as may have been established from them. 
 
 Language is a collection of all the signs of 
 thought by means of which we express our ideas 
 and their relations. The language of mathematics 
 is mixed. It is composed partly of symbols, which 
 have a precise and known signification, and partly of 
 words borrowed from our common language. The 
 symbols, although arbitrary marks, are, nevertheless, 
 entirely general in their signification, as signs and 
 instruments of thought, and when the sense in which 
 they are used is once fixed, by definition, they always 
 retain the same meaning throughout the same pro 
 cess. The meaning of the words taken from our 
 common vocabulary is often modified and sometimes 
 entirely changed, when transferred to the language of 
 science. They are then used in a particular sense 
 and are said to have a technical signification. 
 
 There are three principal forms, or dialects of the 
 
MR. DAVIES ADDKESS. 123 
 
 Mathematical language : the language of Number, of 
 which the elementary symbols are the ten figures: 
 the language of Geometry, of which the elements 
 are the right line and the curve ; and the more 
 comprehensive language of Analysis, in which the 
 quantities considered, whether numerical, concrete, 
 or appertaining to space, are represented by letters 
 of the alphabet. These three forms of language are 
 the basis of classification, and the science of mathe 
 matics is divided into three corresponding parts : 
 Arithmetic, Geometry, and Analysis. 
 
 The alphabet of the Arithmetical language con 
 tains ten characters, called figures, each of which has 
 a name, and when standing by itself indicates as 
 many things as that name denotes. There are but 
 three combinations of these characters the first is 
 formed by writing them in rows the second by 
 writing some of them over or under others and the 
 third, by means of the decimal point. This language, 
 having ten elements and three combinations, is more 
 simple, more minute, and more exact than any other 
 known form of expressing our thoughts- It records 
 all the daily transactions of the world, involving 
 number and quantity. The yearly income the accu 
 mulation of property the balance sheets of mercan 
 tile enterprise are all expressed in numbers, and 
 may be written in figures. These ten little charac- 
 
124 MR. DAVIES ADDRESS. 
 
 ters are not only the sleepless sentinels of trade and 
 commerce, but they also make known all the prac 
 tical results of scientific labor. 
 
 The language of Geometry is pictorial, and has but 
 two elements, the straight line and curve. The com 
 binations of these simple elements give every form 
 and variety of the geometrical language. Distance, 
 surface, volume and angle, are names denoting por 
 tions of space. Under these four names every part 
 of space, in form, extent and dimension, is represent 
 ed to the mind by means of the straight line and 
 curve. This language is both simple and comprehen 
 sive. The shortest distance the curve of grace and 
 beauty the smooth surface and the rugged bound 
 ary are alike amenable to its laws. It presents to the 
 mind, through the eye, the forms and relative mag 
 nitudes of all the heavenly bodies, and, also, of the 
 most minute and delicate objects that are revealed 
 by the microscope. It is the connecting link between 
 theoretical and practical knowledge in the mechanic 
 arts, and the only language in which science speaks 
 to labor. All the works of Architecture, Sculpture 
 and Painting, are but images of the imagination until 
 they assume the geometrical forms. 
 
 The language of analysis is more comprehensive 
 than the language of figures or the pictorial lan 
 guage of geometry ; indeed, it embraces them both. 
 
MR. DAVIES ADDRESS. 125 
 
 Its elements are the leading and final letters of the 
 alphabet, and a few arbitrary signs. The combi 
 nations of these elements are few in number and 
 simple in form; and from these humble sources are 
 derived the fruitful language of analytical science. 
 This language is minute, suggestive, certain, general 
 and comprehensive. It will express every property 
 and relation of number every form which the imagi 
 nation has given to space every moment of time 
 which has elapsed since hours began to be numbered 
 and every motion which has taken place since mat 
 ter began to move. One or the other of these three 
 forms of mathematical language is in daily use in 
 every part of the world, and especially so in every 
 place where science is employed to guide the hand 
 of labor to investigate the laws of matter or to 
 enlarge the boundaries of knowledge. 
 
 Of all mysteries, none is greater than the mystery 
 of language. The invisible essence which we call 
 mind, holds no communion with other minds, except 
 through the double system of signs, the language of 
 the eye and the language of the ear. Destroy the 
 power of language, and the lights of knowledge would 
 be extinguished. Man would live only in the pres 
 ent. The past and the future would be equally be 
 yond his reach. Through language we look back 
 over the records of the past, and trace the progress 
 
126 MR. DAVIES ADDRESS. 
 
 of our race through all its vicissitudes and changes 
 from the very cradle of Creation. The wisdom of 
 philosophy the power of eloquence the graces of 
 rhetoric and the inspirations of poetry, thus become 
 the property of every age and the common heritage 
 of mankind. Scientific language reaches even over a 
 wider field. The laws of the material world are the 
 truths which it records, and the thoughts of God, 
 manifested in all the works of the visible creation, 
 are the treasures of its literature. 
 
 The first step in mental training is to furnish the 
 mind with clear and distinct ideas, with settled 
 names ; each idea and its name being so associated 
 that the one shall always suggest the other. The 
 ideas which make up our knowledge of mathematics 
 fulfill exactly these requirements. They are expressed 
 in a fixed, definite and certain language, which in all 
 its elementary forms may be illustrated by images 
 or pictures, clear and distinct in their outlines, and 
 having names which suggest at once their character 
 istics and properties. 
 
 By means of visible representations of lines, sur 
 faces and volumes, the mind contemplates the abstract, 
 as it were, with a thinking eye. Form, figure, dis 
 tance, space, and the laws relating to them, are 
 thus rendered familiar through the visibility of picto- 
 
MK. DAVIES ADDRESS. 
 
 rial representations. This pictorial language imparts 
 a deep interest, both from its certainty and its influ 
 ence on the imagination it attracts and animates 
 the minds of the young, and gradually prepares them 
 for those higher abstractions and mental efforts, of 
 which they are at first incapable. 
 
 Most of the errors and conflicts in the Schools of 
 Philosophy have arisen from the double or incom 
 plete sense in which words are employed. The terms 
 are all defined in a common language, but there is no 
 fixed standard beyond the language itself. Each 
 term is viewed from a different stand point, and, like 
 the rainbow painted on the clouds, is different to every 
 spectator, though apparently the same. 
 
 Mathematics is free from all such sources of mis 
 take and error. There is no other subject of knowl 
 edge in which there is that exact equivalency be 
 tween the thought and its sign. Number and Space, 
 in all their elementary combinations, may be present 
 ed to the mind by pictorial representations. The 
 senses are thus brought to the aid of the conceptive 
 powers, and by means of this double language, the 
 forms, attributes and laws of magnitude, are explained 
 and verified. 
 
 The study of mathematics accustoms us to the 
 strict use of this exact and copious language, in which 
 all the terms are exponents of distinct crystallized 
 
128 MR. DAVIES ADDRESS. 
 
 ideas. Using these terms as instruments of reason 
 ing, we advance with a steady step, secured from 
 the sources or causes of error which are concealed 
 under uncertain or conflicting meanings. 
 
 Knowledge is .a clear and certain conception of 
 that which is true. Its elements are acquired through 
 the medium of the senses, by observation, experiment 
 and experience ; and these three indicate certain rela 
 tions which the elements bear to each other, and 
 which we express under the general name of law. 
 Law, therefore, is a term of generalization, denoting 
 an order of sequence in phenomena, whether in the 
 material or spiritual, the animate or inanimate world. 
 This order and connection are not obvious to the 
 senses. They are the hidden treasures of knowledge, 
 and are only discovered and brought to light by the 
 highest exercise of the reasoning faculty. 
 
 Since the time of Aristotle, the exact law which 
 governs the reasoning faculty has been well known. 
 By careful analysis and a profound generalization, he 
 subjected every principle of deductive reasoning to a 
 single law, expressed by the dictum, and indicated 
 every operation of that law in the syllogism. The 
 system was yet incomplete. The major premise, on 
 which the whole fabric rested, was assumed, not 
 proved. Bacon supplied this deficiency, in showing 
 that all our knowledge rests, ultimately, on the 
 
MR. DAVIES 1 ADDRESS. 129 
 
 hypothesis of the uniform operation of the laws of 
 nature, and that such uniformity may be inferred by 
 the reasoning faculty, from a collection and compari 
 son of facts, furnished by observation, experiment 
 and experience. This completed the golden circle of 
 logic, and subjected all the laws of nature to the 
 processes of science. 
 
 It becomes, therefore, an important inquiry how 
 far the study of mathematics is a means, in the cul 
 tivation of the reasoning faculties, through which we 
 derive our scientific knowledge how far it is a use 
 ful gymnastic of the mind what mental habits it 
 inculcates, and what developments it produces. We 
 have already adverted to its clear, precise, and com 
 prehensive language, and to the elementary ideas, 
 which that language impresses on the mind. Are 
 these ideas isolated incapable of classification and 
 wanting in the attributes necessary to a logical 
 arrangement ? 
 
 It is the chief excellence of mathematical science, 
 regarded as a means of mental training, that the 
 definitions and axioms are the prolific sources of 
 every deduction. They are the ultimate premises 
 to which every principle can be referred, and the 
 law of connection which binds together all the truths 
 of this complex system, is the simple law of the 
 syllogism. 
 
130 MR. DAVIES ADDRESS. 
 
 Matliematical reasoning, so far as the logic is con 
 cerned, is precisely the same as any other kind of 
 reasoning. It differs from other methods only in the 
 greater preciseness of its language, the nature of the 
 subject and the more obvious relations of the pre 
 mises to each other, and to the conclusion. It has 
 been urged that these differences are detrimental, 
 rather than useful, in the development of the rea 
 soning faculty that the exact equivalency between 
 the idea and the language, the fixed and obvious 
 relation of the premises to each other and to the 
 conclusion, leave no scope for originality in the 
 mental processes, and that truth is thus evolved 
 mechanically, rather than intellectually. Another 
 objection has also been found, in the fact that the 
 matter in the mathematical processes is certain, 
 while in all other cases it is contingent and that to 
 deal with what is certain, in accordance with obvious 
 and fixed laws, disqualifies the mind to deal with 
 what is probable according to laws less obvious and 
 rigorous. 
 
 In regard to the second objection, it is quite cer 
 tain that the degree of probability, in any given 
 case, can only be determined by comparing what is 
 contingent with what is certain certainty being 
 assumed as the standard all inferences are relied 
 upon as they approach this standard, and distrusted 
 
MR. DAVIES ADDKESS. 131 
 
 as they recede from it. Hence, in all systems of 
 intellectual training, having in view the cultivation 
 of the reasoning faculty, the mind should be accus 
 tomed to contemplate that which is certain, in order 
 that it may form a true estimate of that which is 
 contingent or probable. 
 
 How far the laws which regulate and control the 
 processes of mathematical reasoning are merely me 
 chanical, and how far their study and contemplation 
 confine the mind to a mere routine, is best answered 
 by a careful and searching analysis. The processes 
 \T begin with obvious and elementary truths, defined 
 by a precise language, and aided, if need be, by 
 pictorial representations. They then advance step 
 by step in a series of regular and dependent grada 
 tions, developing the concealed and sublime proper 
 ties of number and space. These trains of demon 
 strative reasoning produce the most certain knowl 
 edge of which the mind is capable. They establish 
 truth so clearly that none can deny or doubt. The 
 premises are not only certain, but the most obvious 
 truths which can be presented to the mind, and the 
 conclusions result from the most palpable relations 
 of the premises to each other. What discipline can 
 better train the mind to diligence in study to close 
 and continuous attention to habits of abstraction 
 and to a true logical development ? 
 
132 MR. DA VIES 7 ADDEESS. 
 
 A wide distinction must be made between those 
 processes of mathematics which are merely mechanical 
 and that knowledge of the laws of the science which 
 develops and applies those processes. The calculating 
 machine is a mere instrument, but the discovery and 
 application of the laws of its construction are among 
 the highest efforts of genius. If the machine were 
 dashed to pieces, it could be remodeled, for the law 
 of its construction is known. The conception, there 
 fore, is not mechanical because it is manifested by 
 mechanical agencies. Descartes brought all space 
 within the range and power of analysis, by new 
 methods of representing lines and surfaces. Newton s 
 sublime conception of the law of universal gravita 
 tion is developed in the language of Geometry. 
 Does it follow, because the processes of Geometry 
 and the rules for solving equations are reduced to 
 fixed principles and settled methods, that the ubjects 
 to which they may be applied are limited in their 
 nature ? or> that the contemplation of these subjects, 
 through this, the only language in which they can be 
 presented to the mind, is likely to give a contracted 
 or one-sided development ? 
 
 Mathematical Science deals with Number, Space, 
 Time and Motion. Each is a type of the Creator, in 
 finite in itself, and all are under the dominion of 
 universal laws. In the development of these laws, in 
 
MB. DAVIES ADDKESS. 133 
 
 a language free from obscurity, and in a logic above 
 the influence of passion, sophistry and prejudice, the 
 mind acquires an intensity and ardor which lift it 
 above the strife and petty controversies of earth, into 
 the sphere of the intellectual and absolute. A theo 
 rem demonstrated is an indestructible truth ; but this 
 is not all, it is connected with antecedent truths of 
 the same kind, and is also a guaranty of our success 
 in new efforts to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge. 
 In the construction of the mathematical science, 
 we begin with the axiom and proceed from propo 
 sition to proposition, under the guidance of a rigor 
 ous logic, till we reach the boundaries of that 
 intellectual region which has been already explored. 
 Here we pause, but do not stop ; for beyond are 
 hidden truths which excite our innate desire to 
 know, and an ambition and hope of progress. So, 
 when we stretch out the mathematics to explain and 
 embrace the philosophy of the heavens, we proceed 
 from our own planet, in regular gradations, till we 
 reach the remotest orb of our system. Still further 
 on, we enter the region of Arcturus, Orion, the 
 Pleiades and the Milky Way ; and, even beyond the 
 smallest star whose light has reached the earth, is 
 unmeasured space, yet perhaps to be surveyed by 
 more perfect instruments, and measured by the 
 known laws of mathematical science. 
 
134 ME. DA VIES ADDEESS. 
 
 " There is good room to ask whether the peculiar 
 energy of what might be called the mathematical soul 
 does not carry with it a deep meaning, and declare 
 the truth of man s destination at the first, and of his 
 destiny still to take a place and to act a part in a 
 world of manifested truth and eternal order. Do we 
 venture too far in saying that, when mathematical 
 abstractions of the higher sort take possession of a 
 vigorous reason, there is placed before us a tacit re 
 cognition (one among several, all carrying the same 
 meaning,) of the fact that the human mind is so 
 framed as to find its home nowhere but in a sphere 
 within which the absolute and the unchangeable 
 shall stand revealed in the view of the finite intel 
 ligence ?"* 
 
 The term " practical," in its common acceptation, 
 often denotes shorter methods of obtaining results 
 than are indicated by science. It implies a substitu 
 tion of natural sagacity and " mother wit" for the 
 results of hard study and laborious effort. It implies 
 the use of knowledge before it is acquired the sub 
 stitution of the results of mere experiment for the 
 deductions of science, and the placing of empiricism 
 above philosophy. But give to " practical" its true 
 and right signification, and it becomes a word of real 
 
 * Isaac Taylor. 
 
MR. DAVIES ADDRESS. 135 
 
 import and definite value. In its right sense, it de 
 notes the best means of making the true ideal the 
 actual: that is, of applying the principles of science in 
 all the practical business of life, and of bodying forth 
 in material form the conceptions of taste and genius. 
 
 Beyond the obvious application of simple and 
 known principles, the whole problem of the practical 
 lies in the measurement, modification and best uses of 
 the forces of nature. In all the uses and applications 
 of these forces, material substances are employed, 
 and these must be fashioned according to certain 
 forms indicated by scientific formulas. These formu 
 las are constructed from the laws which regulate the 
 cohesion of the particles of the substance employed 
 the nature of the force to be applied the amount of 
 that force and the ultimate end to be attained. All 
 these fixed laws of force all their combinations 
 and all the forms of the materials employed in using 
 them for practical purposes, can only be reached 
 through the processes and language of mathematics. 
 
 Machines and workshops afford marked illustra 
 tions of the utility and value of mathematical science, 
 and, in their resolution of difficult practical problems, 
 furnish a striking exhibition of the power of mind 
 over matter. Any one, introduced for the first time 
 to the interior of one of our great factories, would 
 doubtless regard with no small perplexity the equip- 
 
136 ME. DAVIES ADDEESS. 
 
 ment and play of so many variously directed instru 
 ments of motion the great size and extent of the 
 whole structure the jar which startles at first, but 
 by the steadiness of its pulsations soon persuades you 
 to take the cadence and measure of the great machine, 
 and to appropriate, as it were, a share of the produ 
 cing power and it would be strange if you were not 
 also persuaded that all this bewildering procession 
 of complex returning movements must be under the 
 guidance of some great scientific law. 
 
 All the parts of that complicated machinery are 
 adjusted to each other, and were indeed so arranged, 
 according to a given plan, before a single wheel was 
 formed by the hand of the forger. The power neces 
 sary to do the entire work was first carefully cal 
 culated, and then distributed throughout the ramifi 
 cations of the machinery. Each part was so arranged 
 as to fulfill its office. Every circumference and band 
 and cog, has its specific duty assigned to it. They 
 are connecting parts of an entire practical scientific 
 system, over which one of the parts, fitly called the 
 governor, is most ingeniously appointed to preside. 
 It is the function of this apt and beautiful contrivance 
 to regulate the force which shall drive the whole, ac 
 cording to a uniform speed; and it performs the 
 office with such sensibility and seeming intelligence, 
 that, on the slightest increase of velocity, it com- 
 
MR, DAVIES ADDRESS. 
 
 mences and executes, with easy gradations, a diminu 
 tion of the moving force of the machine, and as in 
 stinctively calls up additional power the moment that 
 the speed slackens. All this is the result of calcula 
 tion. When the curious shall visit these exhibitions 
 of ingenuity and skill, let them not suppose that 
 they are the offspring of chance and experiment. 
 They are the embodiment, by intelligent labor, of 
 the results of the most difficult investigations of 
 science. 
 
 The Steamship affords another impressive illustra 
 tion of theoretical and practical science. Observe 
 her form how perfect in all its parts how beauti 
 ful in outline how exact in proportion. See how 
 gracefully she rests upon the water, which she 
 scarcely seems to touch. On the upper deck, the 
 masts and ropes, the yards, the spars, the booms 
 and sails, are all adjusted to the proper angle and 
 are the instruments by which the power of the wind 
 is pressed into the service of commerce. But this 
 is not the power on which she relies. The great 
 mechanical contrivance, to which I have alluded, 
 which just now shook the earth with its jar, is to be 
 readjusted and folded within a structure having its 
 own peculiar form and limits, designed for special 
 functions and moving on a new element. The source 
 of power is a simple change in the form of a fluid. 
 
138 MR. DAVIES 7 ADDRESS. 
 
 The massive cylinders, the huge levers, the lifting 
 and closing valves are contrivances to convey this 
 power to the water wheels, where the resistance of 
 the water, according to known laws, transfers it to 
 the ship itself. 
 
 Over all this complication of machinery over all 
 this variety of principle and workmanship, science 
 has waved her magic wand. There is not a cylinder 
 whose dimensions were not measured not a lever 
 whose power was not calculated, nor a valve which 
 does not open and shut at the appointed moment. 
 There is not, in all this structure, a bolt, a screw, or 
 rod which was not provided for before the great 
 shaft was forged, and which does not bear to that 
 shaft a proper proportion. 
 
 The language of Geometry and Number furnished 
 the architect with all the signs and instruments of 
 thought necessary to a perfect ideal of his work, 
 before he took the first step in its execution. It also 
 enabled him, by drawings and figures, so to direct 
 the hand of labor as to form the actual after its 
 pattern the ideal. The various parts may be con 
 structed by different mechanics, at different places, 
 but the law of science is so certain that every part 
 will have its right dimensions, and when all are 
 put together they form a perfect whole. 
 
 When the work is done and the ship takes her 
 
MB. DAVIES ADDRESS. 139 
 
 departure for another continent, a small piece of iron, 
 a few inches in length, poised on its centre, under 
 the influence of a known force, is the little pilot 
 which guides her over trackless waters. Science has 
 also provided, for daily use, maps and charts of the 
 port which she leaves, of the ocean to be traversed 
 and of the coasts and harbors which are to be visited. 
 On these are marked the results of much careful 
 labor. The shoals, the channels, the points of 
 danger and the places of security, are all indicated. 
 Near by hangs the Barometer, constructed from 
 mathematical formulas, to indicate changes in the 
 weight of the atmosphere and give warning of 
 the approaching tempest. In close proximity are 
 the Sextant and the Tables of Bowditch. These are 
 the simple contrivances which science has furnished 
 to correct the errors of the needle, by observations 
 on the heavenly bodies, and to determine the exact 
 position of the vessel at any moment of the voy 
 age. Thus, practical science, which determined the 
 form of the vessel best adapted to a given velocity, 
 which measured and distributed the propelling force 
 and which guided the hand of the mechanic in 
 every workshop, is, under Providence, the means 
 of conducting her in safety over the ocean. It is, 
 indeed, the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by 
 night. 
 
140 MR. DAVIES ADDRESS. 
 
 The construction of railways is a recent and most 
 important application of science. The mechanic arts, 
 commerce and civilization have all received an im 
 pulse in this new development of power. The 
 chariots of commerce, which rush with such dizzying 
 velocity over the iron bands which now nearly en 
 circle the globe, are all guided by immutable laws 
 that have been carefully developed by the aid of 
 diagrams and equations. When you see the long 
 train, with its locomotive, ascending the mountain, 
 fear not, for science traced the curve and balanced 
 the forces. When the mountain is to be pierced 
 instead of being scaled, a few lines drawn on paper 
 indicate the precise points, at the opposite extremi 
 ties, where the work is to be begun ; and after years 
 of labor the two working parties meet near the 
 centre, and in the exact line established before the 
 ground was broken. 
 
 In every case where power is employed, either to 
 produce motion or to maintain a state of rest, the 
 mechanical principle of force and resistance must be 
 considered and discussed. Mathematics is the only 
 form of language which connects science with all the 
 mechanic arts and guides the hand of labor as it 
 bodies forth the conceptions of the mind. It is, 
 therefore, the only true basis of the practical ; and 
 perhaps it is not too much to add, that whatever is 
 
MR. DAVIES ADDRESS. 141 
 
 true and just in the practical is the actual of an 
 antecedent ideal. 
 
 Material objects are the first things which attract 
 our notice. We behold the earth filled with products 
 and teeming with life. We note the return of day 
 and night at regular intervals the coming of sum 
 mer and winter, and the succession of heat and cold. 
 We see the sun in the firmament we turn our eyes 
 to the starry heavens and behold the sentinels of 
 night as they look down upon us. Facts, often 
 observed, suggest the idea of causes and, when 
 science scatters her light over the pathway of the 
 past and the future, we learn the existence of gen 
 eral laws imparted by the fiat of Him who created 
 all things and come to understand that mind in all 
 its attributes, and matter in all its forms, are subject 
 to those laws and that their study is the noblest 
 employment of our intellectual nature. 
 
 To the uneducated man, all the world is a mystery. 
 He does not see how so great a uniformity can exist 
 with the infinite variety which pervades every depart 
 ment of nature, animate and inanimate. In the ani 
 mal kingdom no two of a species are exactly alike ; 
 and yet the general resemblance and conformity are 
 so close that the Naturalist, from the examination of 
 a single bone, finds no difficulty in determining the 
 
142 MR. DA VIES 7 ADDEESS. 
 
 species, size and structure of the animal. So, also, 
 in the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, where all 
 the structures of growth and formation, though infi 
 nitely varied, are yet conformable to like general 
 laws. 
 
 The wonderful mechanism displayed in the struc 
 ture of animals was but imperfectly understood, un 
 til analyzed and illustrated by the principles of 
 science. Then, a general law, applicable to every case 
 involving power and motion, was found to pervade 
 the whole. Every bone is proved to be of that 
 length and diameter best adapted to its use every 
 muscle is inserted at the right point, and works about 
 the right centre the feathers of every bird are 
 shaped in the best form, and the curves in which they 
 cleave the air are the best adapted to velocity. It is 
 demonstrated, that in every case, and in all the vari 
 eties of form, in which forces are applied, either to 
 increase power or gain velocity, general laws have 
 been established to produce the desired results. Thus 
 science makes known to us the foreknowledge and 
 wisdom of the Creator. 
 
 But inanimate nature also speaks to us in the lan 
 guage of general laws, and it is in the investigation 
 and interpretation of these laws that mathematical 
 science finds its widest range and its most striking 
 applications. Experience, aided by observation and 
 
MR. DAVIES ADDRESS. 143 
 
 enlightened by experiment, is the recognized fountain 
 of all knowledge of nature. On this foundation Bacon 
 rested his philosophy. He saw that the deductive 
 process of Aristotle, in which the conclusion does not 
 reach beyond the premises, was not progressive. It 
 might, indeed, improve the reasoning process, culti 
 vate habits of nice discrimination and give great pro 
 ficiency in verbal dialectics; but the basis was too 
 narrow for that expansive philosophy which was to 
 unfold and harmonize all the laws of nature. Hence, 
 he suggested a careful examination of nature in every 
 department, and thus laid the foundations of a new 
 philosophy. Nature was to be interrogated by ex 
 periment ; observation was to note the results and 
 gather the facts into the store-house of knowledge. 
 Facts, so obtained, were subjected to analysis and 
 collation, and from such classification general laws 
 were inferred, by a reasoning process called Induc 
 tion. 
 
 This new philosophy gave a startling impulse to 
 the mind, and to knowledge. Its subject was nature 
 material and immaterial ; its object, the discovery 
 and analysis of those general laws which pervade, 
 regulate and impart uniformity to all things ; its 
 processes, experience, experiment and observation for 
 the ascertainment of facts, analysis and comparison 
 for their classification, and the reasoning process for 
 
144 MR. DAVIES ADDRESS. 
 
 the establishment of general laws. But the work 
 would have been incomplete without the aid of 
 deductive Science. General laws, deduced from many 
 separate cases, by induction, needed additional proof; 
 for they might have been inferred from resemblances 
 too slight, or from coincidences too few. Mathematics 
 affords such proofs. 
 
 Every branch of natural philosophy was originally 
 experimental ; each generalization rested on a special 
 induction, and was derived from its own distinct set 
 of observations and experiments. From being sciences 
 of pure experiment, or sciences in which the reason 
 ings consist of no more than one step, and that step 
 an induction, all these sciences have become, to some 
 extent, and some of them in nearly their whole 
 extent, sciences of pure reasoning : thus, multitudes 
 of truths, already known by induction, from as many 
 different sets of experiments, have come to be exhib 
 ited as deductions, or corollaries from inductive pro 
 positions of a simple and more universal character. 
 Thus, Mechanics, Acoustics, Optics and Chemistry, 
 have successively been rendered mathematical : and 
 Astronomy was brought by Newton within the laws 
 of general mechanics. 
 
 The substitution of this circuitous mode of pro 
 ceeding, for a process apparently much easier and 
 more natural, is held, and justly too, to be the great- 
 
ME. DAVIES ABDEESS. 145 
 
 est triumph in the investigation of nature. But it is 
 necessary to remark that although, by this progressive 
 transformation, all sciences tend to become more and 
 more deductive, they are not, therefore, the less in 
 ductive: for every step in the deduction rests on 
 antecedent induction.* 
 
 We can now, therefore, perceive what is the gen 
 eric distinction between sciences which can be made 
 deductive, and those which must, as yet, remain 
 experimental. The difference consists in our having 
 been able, in the first case, and not in the second, to 
 establish a set of first inductions, from which, as from 
 a general law, we are able to draw a series of con 
 nected and dependent truths. For example, when 
 Newton, by observing and comparing the motions 
 of several of the bodies of the solar system, discov 
 ered that each, whether its motions were regular 
 or apparently anomalous, conformed to the law of 
 moving around a common centre, urged by a centri 
 petal force, varying directly as the mass and inversely 
 as the square of the distance, he inferred the exist 
 ence of the law for all bodies ; and then demonstra 
 ted,, by the aid of mathematics, that no other law 
 could produce such motions. This is the most strik 
 ing example which has yet occurred of the transform 
 ation, at a single stroke, of a science, which was in 
 
 * Mill s Logic. 
 10 
 
146 MR. DAVIES ADDRESS. 
 
 a great degree experimental, into one purely deduct 
 ive. 
 
 It is in the great problem of the solar system that- 
 mathematical science displays its omnipotent power. 
 The sun himself, manifesting his inexpressible glory 
 by the floods of golden light which he scatters 
 through the immensity of space, is yet subjected to 
 the analytical formula, and must confess to it, from 
 his more than imperial throne his exact dimensions 
 his weight and balancing power, and his relative 
 importance when compared with the smallest mote 
 which his own light has revealed. It is thus that 
 the intellectual power, aided and stimulated by the 
 processes of mathematical science, has been able to 
 trace backwards, to the earliest past, all the motions 
 of the heavenly bodies and to bring the remotest 
 future of the planetary system within the range of 
 its computations. It is thus that man, inhabiting 
 one of the smallest planets of the system, computes 
 the celestial cycles and determines all the laws of the 
 movement of the celestial machinery. 
 
 He has done even more than this. Those vagrant 
 bodies of the heavens which occasionally visit our 
 system, and which seem to have escaped from their 
 own spheres and to wander heedlessly through space, 
 are yet subjected to the power of analysis. A few 
 observations, made by the practical astronomer, afford 
 
MK. DA VIES ADDRESS. 147 
 
 the necessary elements for computing the forms of 
 their orbits and their periodic times ; and in distant 
 years, at the indicated moment, the comet again 
 blazes in the sky! In short, before this august power 
 all nature yields up the mystery of her laws. If, 
 then, we would enter her spacious temple, and seek 
 after the knowledge which is there, let us not forget 
 the Aladdin s lamp of mathematical science, which, 
 being properly touched, will disclose more treasures 
 than have ever been described in Eastern fable. 
 
 The place which mathematics should occupy in a 
 system of collegiate instruction is an inquiry of the 
 gravest import, and necessarily involves the question, 
 What should be the nature of the system itself? 
 
 It was stated, in the opening address, on the highest 
 authority, " that the end of a liberal education is the 
 general and harmonious evolution of all the faculties 
 and capacities of the mind in their relative subor 
 dination." It is not the base, nor the massive shaft, 
 nor the beautiful forms of the capital, which fill the 
 mind as we gaze on the Corinthian column ; but it is 
 their unity and the general effect of their combina 
 tion. It is the whole mind, in all its intellectual and 
 emotional faculties, to which the experienced educator 
 addresses himself. 
 
 So far as our knowledge extends, we have found 
 
148 MR. DAVIES ADDRESS. 
 
 in tliat mysterious essence, the mind, a faculty adapt 
 ed to the apprehension of every law, and an emo 
 tion corresponding to the contemplation of every 
 object. May not the reverse of this proposition 
 be true ? May it not be, that for every faculty 
 of the mind, whether intellectual or emotional, there 
 exists, somewhere, a proper object of contemplation? 
 and that the perfection of our knowledge and being 
 will be attained when all such objects are found ? It 
 is in accordance with this law that different studies 
 cultivate different powers of the mind, and that it 
 requires the study of many subjects to give a general 
 and harmonious evolution of all its faculties. Mathe 
 matics does not equally cultivate every faculty it is 
 the massive trunk and outward form, but language, 
 literature, and moral culture, are the sap which ascends 
 within, and which is necessary to give beauty to the 
 foliage and health and harmony to the whole devel 
 opment. All the colors of the rainbow, which are 
 painted on the clouds, are necessary to the perfect 
 light of day so every light of knowledge is required 
 in the perfect illumination of the mind. 
 
 It is the special function of mathematical studies, 
 to cultivate the faculty of abstraction and the habit 
 of intense and continued attention to establish in 
 the mind a self-centering power that shall subordinate 
 all the intellectual faculties to the control of the will 
 
MR. DA VIES ADDRESS. 149 
 
 to create, as it were, a governor of the intellectual 
 machinery, that will give harmony and uniformity 
 to all its motions. As an elementary formula of 
 logic, it is the most simple and perfect. As a drill, 
 in the structure and use of language, in its primary 
 forms, no exercise insures greater precision in the use 
 of words, or imparts to the mind as certain rela 
 tions between the signs and the things signified. In 
 its higher branches, it is even an aid in the study of 
 theology ; for it constantly raises the mind to the con 
 templation of the Unchangeable and the Infinite. 
 Mathematics, therefore, is an aid and auxiliary in 
 every other branch of study. It may be pursued 
 too exclusively the mind may become too much 
 absorbed by its machinery and formulas ; but this 
 danger is common to the study of every other sub 
 ject. A life spent exclusively on the Greek Gram 
 mar would not make a Greek scholar ; nor can the 
 wide field of deductive reasoning be explored by 
 repeating the formulas of the dictum and syllogism. 
 
 Concurring fully in what was said, in the opening 
 address, concerning the great value of the study of 
 the Greek and Latin languages, and also in the 
 merited eulogium of the manner in which these lan 
 guages are taught in this institution, I may yet be 
 permitted to say, that there is another language far 
 more comprehensive than either or both of them : 
 
150 MR. DA VIES 7 ADDKESS. 
 
 the language of mathematics, which embraces within 
 its ample folds all the laws of the material universe. 
 This language takes us back to the birth of matter, 
 and measures and records every step which each 
 planet has taken since it began to move. Yea, more : 
 it is prophetic it reveals all future motions, and 
 indicates the precise places which all matter must 
 occupy, at any given instant of future time. 
 
 This is the language in which the practical astrono 
 mer studies the heavens. It is the telegraphic wire 
 which has enabled him to communicate with every 
 planet of our system to measure its diameter, its 
 specific gravity, the dimensions of its orbit, its times 
 of revolution and its balancing power in the system 
 of the universe. It is this language which has ena 
 bled him to bring the ring of Saturn into his own 
 study, where he sees it face to face, and, as it were, 
 touches the very particles of matter of which it is 
 composed. 
 
 This language has enabled the naturalist to trace 
 the dominion of law over all matter endowed with 
 life. The contemplation of the minute objects of 
 creation may appear, at first sight, unworthy the 
 labors of the highest genius but it is quite otherwise. 
 The turtle s egg, the little gnat whose tiny wings vi 
 brate five hundred times in a second, and the entire 
 solar system, are each an embodiment of a thought 
 
ME. DA VIES ADDRESS. 151 
 
 of God. Whether we look through the microscope 
 or the telescope, we are equally instructed iu the 
 wonders of creative power and universal law. 
 
 But science is not all in all. It does not compass 
 the final aim and ultimate end of our being. Though 
 it reaches back to the time when God said "Let 
 there be light and there was light," and forward to 
 the time when ".there shall be a new heaven and a 
 new earth" though it measures all space though 
 it explains all laws relating to matter and motion 
 though it transports us to the central point of the 
 physical universe, whence we behold the heavenly 
 hosts moving in celestial harmony : yet, when we 
 approach that mysterious line where the finite ter 
 minates and the infinite begins, new visions open to 
 the mind all science and human knowledge fade 
 away like castellated clouds made brilliant by the 
 setting sun Faith then arises in supernal beauty, 
 and, with veiled eyes and trembling voice, we con 
 fess, " In the beginning was the Word, and the 
 Word was with God, and the Word was God." 
 
INAUGURAL DISCOURSE 
 
 CHARLES MURRAY NAIRNE, M. A., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 February, 1858. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 THE subjects assigned to the Professor of Litera 
 ture and Philosophy in Columbia College are so multi 
 farious, that a notice of each in succession, no longer 
 than a brief newspaper article, would occupy the whole 
 time allotted to the present discourse. Within the 
 narrow bounds to which I am necessarily limited, how 
 much could a man say on the great topics of Universal 
 Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Oratory, ^Esthetics, Psy 
 chology, Ethics, Ancient and Modern Literature, the 
 History of Philosophy, and that finest of all the Fine 
 Arts the living representation of our thoughts and 
 feelings, by the symbols and the music of our mother 
 tongue ? I know no process of intellectual condensa 
 tion, by which any adequate or interesting account 
 of so many departments of learning could be laid 
 before you, on such an occasion as this. Every one 
 of them would, of itself, furnish materials sufficient 
 to fill full that utmost limit of the American listener s 
 patience an hour. 
 
 Were I to make a selection from the encyclopaedia 
 
156 MR. NAIIWE S ADDRESS. 
 
 of arts and sciences that I am appointed to teach, 
 and to group together those three kindred branches, 
 Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric, however unpopular 
 my choice, from so great a variety, might seem, I 
 doubt not that I could unfold to you such views of 
 the human mind, in its operations of thought and 
 expression, as would not fail to excite your curiosity, 
 and command your attention. It would be my duty 
 to show you that man is distinguished from the lower 
 animals, and connected with the nature of angels and 
 of God, by the reasoning faculty ; and that, in the use 
 of this faculty, all mankind from the child to the 
 sage, from the barbarian to the philosopher are 
 doing precisely the same thing in the self-same way 
 namely, deducing conclusions from premises. The 
 learned are conscious of the syllogistic process, and 
 can reduce their reasonings to the syllogistic form ; 
 the unlearned are unconscious of the process, and 
 perform it naturally ; nevertheless the process is 
 identical in both ; and its discovery is one of the 
 noblest examples of generalization within the whole 
 compass of human knowledge quite as noble as the 
 law of affinity, which, in fixed proportions, holds 
 together the constituents of matter, or the law of 
 gravitation, which links, by an invisible bond, the 
 spheres of the celestial concave. 
 
 I should further have to show you that, as language 
 
MR. NAIRNE S ADDRESS. 157 
 
 is the body of thought the audible or visible sym- 
 bolization of the unseen spirit s operations and states 
 and that as the process of thinking is human- 
 common to, and characteristic of, the entire family of 
 man the propositions, in which thoughts are embo 
 died, must have the same essential form, and consist 
 of the same elements, in every language under heaven. 
 It would thus appear that Grammar is not an art but 
 a science a department of the great science of mind, 
 possessing deep interest as an intellectual study; 
 and not merely a system of rules for the exercise of 
 school-boys, and the prevention of slips of the tongue. 
 It would appear that, while various nations employ 
 various sounds to designate objects, actions, attributes, 
 and relations, and have thus each a different lexico 
 graphy, the grammar, properly so called, of all lan 
 guages is, with the exception of a few idioms and 
 peculiar arrangements in each, the very same ; and 
 that it is, in fact, nearly as absurd to talk of Greek 
 Grammar and Latin Grammar, English Grammar and 
 French Grammar, as it would be to talk of Greek, 
 Latin, English and French Logic Greek, Latin, Eng 
 lish and French Chemistry. Logic is logic, and 
 Chemistry, chemistry, in whatever tongue they are 
 employed or expounded ; and so, also, Grammar is 
 grammar the science of the human speech in Latin 
 or in English, in Greek or in French, in Chinese or 
 
158 MR. NAIRNE S ADDRESS. 
 
 in Choctaw. Wherever men speak wherever the 
 fjLepoTre? avdpMTTOL exist they must of necessity in 
 dicate objects, and, therefore, have nouns ; actions, 
 and, therefore, have verbs; attributes, and, there 
 fore, have adjectives ; relations, and, therefore, have 
 prefixes and suffixes separate or conjoined ; and 
 the subject, predicate and copula must be used, as 
 often as mankind have anything to speak of, and 
 something to say concerning it. The distinctions of 
 gender, number and comparison of person, time, 
 mode, and voice are not arbitrary, but determined 
 by the nature of things. In short, the principles of 
 grammatical science are universal and necessary ; and 
 when the grammars of various languages are divested 
 of the absurdities with which pedantry has overlaid 
 them, it will be found that the difference between one 
 tongue and another is simply a difference of vocabu 
 lary and arrangement something to be mastered by 
 the memory, rather than grasped by the under 
 standing something that can not be reduced to law, 
 unless we receive as philosophy the hypothesis that 
 certain vocal elements are the natural and universal 
 representatives of certain ideas. 
 
 I should still further have to show you that, as 
 reasoning and speech are essential attributes of hu 
 manity, so, in the use of these for the purposes of 
 convincing and persuading, the same methods of in- 
 
MR. NAIRNE S ADDRESS. 159 
 
 venting arguments, and the same ways of arranging 
 and applying them, are common to every speaker 
 under the sun to all nations, and kindreds and 
 peoples and tongues to the Indian chief who ha 
 rangues his tribe, the diplomatist who negotiates 
 treaties, the legislator who evokes the applause of 
 senates, and the minister of religion who commends 
 salvation to dying men. Real Rhetoric is no conven 
 tional mode of dressing up Truth no mere fashion, 
 changing from year to year, and varying capriciously 
 from beauty to deformity ; but a genuine, legitimate 
 Art, founded on universal and immutable principles. 
 It is an art, indeed, to which genius sometimes may 
 attain almost spontaneously, as Homer and Shake 
 speare did in poetry; nevertheless, Kke poetry, it has 
 its conditioning laws which the philosopher investi 
 gates with pleasure, and which even genius may 
 study with advantage. For genius is no lawless, 
 wayward power. Its own insight discerns the ide 
 als of truth and beauty, and these it publishes to 
 mankind in its own practice. It is the image and 
 vicegerent of Eternal Wisdom, proclaiming the law 
 of Heaven to others, while itself yielding to it a free 
 and loyal obedience. 
 
 Or again, quitting abstruse discussion, and choosing 
 a more attractive flower from my garland, I might 
 
160 ME. NAIRNE S ADDRESS. 
 
 entertain you with the history and principles of Ora 
 tory. Were I to make this selection, it would be my 
 task to describe those mighty masters of eloquence 
 to whose fervid speech the hearts of men have thrill 
 ed, and by whom a power was wielded to shape the 
 destinies of nations and the world. I should tell you 
 of Nestor and Ulysses as they utter melodious fascina 
 tion in the verse of Homer ; of Demosthenes, who 
 
 " fulmined over Greece 
 To Macedon and Artaxerxes throne ;" 
 
 of Tully, who transformed Athenian vehemence and 
 splendor into Roman stateliness and majesty ; of One 
 far greater still, who, sitting on the mountain side, or 
 by the crowded shore, proclaimed as man never spake, 
 and with a celestial dignity beyond the loftiest repose 
 of art, the sublime revelations of life and immortal 
 ity ; and hastening down the stream of time I should 
 glance, as I passed, at the famous preachers and dis 
 putants the Augustines, and Chrysostoms, and Abe- 
 lards of the middle ages, till, having crossed the 
 abyss that divides the ancient world from the modern, 
 I should group before you, in their various characters, 
 the most distinguished orators who have flourished 
 since the birth of the Reformation Luther and 
 Knox, with their rugged impetuosity; the more 
 courtly and classic rhetoricians of the Anglican and 
 
MR. NAIRNE S ADDRESS. 161 
 
 Galilean churches, and the stern conscience-searchers 
 of the Puritan meeting-house ; the fiery invective of 
 Chatham, and the magnificence of his indomitable 
 son ; the glory of Fox, the splendor of Sheridan, and 
 the philosophic gorgeousness of Burke ; the forensic 
 brilliancy of Erskine, Curran, and Scarlett; the en 
 ergetic elegance of Canning, and the dark strength 
 of Brougham ; the fearless simplicity of Henry, the 
 logical massiveness of Webster, the prophetic rapture 
 of Edward Irving, and the overwhelming intensity of 
 Chalmers. 
 
 And when I passed from the distinguishing char 
 acteristics of these and other great masters in ora 
 tory, to the nature of eloquence itself, I should show 
 you that the grand secret of power in them all was 
 naturalness and earnestness ; and that the attributes 
 which peculiarly belonged to the worthiest of them, 
 were resolute honesty, strong love of man, and a 
 heart-felt adoration of truth. 
 
 Or again, if, omitting the laws of reason and speech, 
 and the practical use of these laws by the orator in 
 convincing and persuading his fellows, I were to se 
 lect from my repertory the subject of ^Esthetics, or 
 the Philosophy of Taste, it would be my endeavor to 
 display before you that beauty which clothes all Na 
 ture as with a vesture of light, and has its source and 
 11 
 
162 MR, NAIRNE S ADDRESS. 
 
 centre in the Eternal, who dwells amid light that is 
 inaccessible and full of glory ; and to investigate that 
 susceptibility, unpossessed by the brute whose eye 
 conveys no sense of loveliness from the loveliest land 
 scape but bestowed on human beings, and regaling 
 their souls with all those delights of shape and sound, 
 of motion and melody, which reflect, in Creation, the 
 ineffable aspect of the Infinitely Beautiful. Nor 
 would my essay be complete, till, in addition to the 
 objective beauty of God and His works, and the sub 
 jective human sensibility that thrills to it, I should 
 speak of those immortal creations, wherein the genius 
 of poet, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, and 
 orator, has enshrined the divine loveliness and sub 
 limity of the universe ; and show you how the spirit 
 of every one of them, either consciously or unconsci 
 ously, held high converse with Him who, from the 
 beauty of His holiness, sheds over heaven a bright 
 ness above the brightness of the sun. 
 
 There is what may be termed a language of 
 form, expressed in figure and tone, addressing itself 
 intelligibly to the reason, and exciting in the heart 
 emotions corresponding to every sentiment of rational 
 beings. Man, as rational, has the capacity to under 
 stand this language, and, therefore, it is, to a certain 
 extent, known and read of all men ; but the language 
 of form must be studied in order to be fully compre- 
 
MR. NAIRNE S ADDRESS. 163 
 
 hended, and the susceptibility must be cultivated, in 
 order to receive all the enjoyment which the language 
 is fitted to awaken. From the intercourse that we 
 are compelled to hold with our fellow-mortals, we 
 learn first to interpret the symbols of beauty in the 
 lineaments of the human countenance, and in the ac 
 cents of the human tongue. That mysterious thing 
 which we call expression is evidently conveyed by 
 mere shape and sound ; and, to become sensible 
 of the wonderful adaptation of these to represent 
 every shade of sentiment, we have only to consider 
 how slight are the modifications of outline which 
 will alter the whole expression of one s face, and the 
 changes of tone which will represent joy or sorrow, 
 cheerfulness or solemnity, hope or despondency. It 
 is the same countenance that we see, and the same 
 voice that we hear the countenance and the voice 
 of our familiar friend not a feature or tone is unre 
 cognized; but complicated changes of form have 
 taken place, which the reason instantaneously appre 
 hends, and to which the susceptibility instantaneously 
 responds. The changes in point of quantity have 
 been very small, but they have been sufficient to 
 tell the story of one mind to another ; and to tell 
 it with a rapidity and concentration to which the 
 power of ordinary language is - but feebleness. Now, 
 from this one example we may learn the general ex- 
 
164 MR. NAIENE S ADDEESS. 
 
 pressiveness of shape and sound; and understand 
 how the Divine Artist, in creation, or the human 
 artist, in his chosen walk of painting, sculpture, music, 
 or poetry, may convey to all rational "beings, by out 
 line and measure, the ideal that exists in his own soul. 
 In the course of our JEsthetical Education, the lan 
 guage of beauty becomes continually more pregnant 
 to our intellect and more striking to our sensibility, 
 till, at last, in the galleries of art, in the cathedral 
 and the concert-room, or amid the scenery and har 
 monies of nature, the sentient spirit drinks in meaning 
 and delight from all that surrounds it. The insight 
 of reason reads the sentiment of every form. The 
 statue, the picture, the tune, the landscape, are all 
 inspired and the mind catches the import of each 
 " peculiarity of modulated tone and delineated figure. 
 The utterance of human sentiment in sensible forms 
 gives Beauty ; and when the disclosed sentiment is 
 that of a superhuman spirit, and we stand awe-struck 
 in the presence of an angel or a divinity, the Beauty 
 rises proportionally, and elevates itself into the 
 Sublime. 7 * 
 
 Or yet again, were I attracted from all the 
 rest of my themes by the charms of Literature, 
 it would be my duty to characterize, in the first 
 
 *Hickok s Pyschology. 
 
MR. KAIENE S ADDRESS. 165 
 
 place, the collective literature of nations, as embody 
 ing and exhibiting the peculiarities of national mind : 
 the primitive simplicity of the Hebrew chroniclers, 
 and the unapproachable majesty of the Hebrew 
 poets the splendor, variety, and all but perfect 
 beauty of Grecian genius, and the borrowed lus 
 tre of its Roman imitators the half-christian, half- 
 pagan imaginations of mediaeval Italy and Spain 
 the grandeur of English letters in the early vigor of 
 their youth, when Shakespeare created, and Bacon 
 philosophized, and Raleigh began the history of the 
 world the more artificially polished productions of 
 the Gallic muse, which, crossing the channel as the 
 missionaries of a less sturdy civilization, converted 
 the English Miltons and Jeremy Taylors into Popes 
 and Addisons, and the Scottish Knoxes and Buchan 
 ans into Robertsons and Blairs the Teutonic revul 
 sion, which brought back the reign of originality and 
 of power in Germany, and spread from thence to 
 Britain and even into France herself and last of all, 
 that hybrid style of thought and writing, which the 
 mixed population and rapid growth of our own coun 
 try have necessitated, and the elements of which have 
 not yet become so blended and assimilated into a 
 unity as to constitute a peculiar national literature. 
 And then, passing from the broader distinctions of 
 national genius to the more marked peculiarities of 
 
166 ME. NAIRKE S ADDRESS. 
 
 individual authors, it would be my happiness to ex 
 patiate in retrospect among the u departed spirits of 
 the mighty dead" of all whose names live in the 
 page of history, and without whom History herself 
 had never been seeing that if the exploits of kings 
 and heroes had remained unchronicled by annalist 
 and bard, they would all have been forgotton utterly, 
 or only recalled, in dimness and in terror, by the 
 ruins of ancient cities, 
 
 " And mighty relics of gigantic bones," 
 
 turned up by the peasant s plough from the battle 
 fields and burial-grounds of unrecorded generations, 
 
 " Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona 
 
 Multi : sed omnes illacrimabiles 
 
 Urguentur ignotique longa 
 
 Nocte, carent quia rate sacro." 
 
 Having thus dismissed, by little more than a mere 
 mention of them, all the other topics belonging to 
 my department, I come now to the noblest and most 
 arduous of the whole the philosophy of the True 
 and the Good. Were I to attempt presenting you 
 with an outline of intellectual and ethical science, 
 and a skeleton history of philosophy, extending from 
 the remote era of Pythagoras, who first employed 
 the term, through the various schools of Greece and 
 Italy, down to the present time, the sketch would be 
 
ME. NAIRNE S ADDRESS. 167 
 
 so meagre, imperfect and uninteresting, that it would 
 give little satisfaction either to listeners or to speaker. 
 Neither can I allow myself to enlarge, in general 
 terms, on the importance of moral and metaphysical 
 study, as dealing with the most momentous questions 
 that can engage the mind of man, and investigating 
 the foundations of all knowledge whatsoever. It 
 is on the high places of philosophy that the skeptic, 
 the atheist, the pantheist, the materialist, and the 
 spiritualist must be met and overthrown. Hence the 
 value and the difficulty of the inquiries which 
 philosophy embraces. But, instead of touching, ex 
 cept incidentally, on any of these inquiries, I deem 
 it of far greater consequence at present to aver, with 
 as much publicity and emphasis as possible, that of 
 all the professors in your College, it is most indis 
 pensable that he who occupies the chair of philoso 
 phy should be thoroughly sound in the faith of the 
 Gospel ; for, in the name of science and under covert 
 of her robe, he may teach, if so minded, the wildest 
 and most pernicious doctrines. I desire, then, first of 
 all to declare that, both from the constitution of my 
 intellect and the impulses of my heart, I am com 
 pelled to believe that there is a God a self-conscious, 
 personal, infinitely gracious Maker and Father of all 
 The infinite is not opposed to the finite as light is to 
 darkness, truth to falsehood, right to wrong, virtue to 
 
168 MR. NAIRNE S ADDRESS. 
 
 vice. Tlie infinite embraces the finite, and the idea 
 of the latter necessarily calls forth, as its correlative 
 and complement, the idea of the former. My mind 
 cannot survey the boundaries of the finite and con 
 ditioned without gazing awfully into the infinite that 
 contains it, and reverentially toward the Absolute, of 
 whom I myself am a feeble image. My soul is not 
 satisfied its natural craving is not filled until it has 
 passed the confines which mark off that which is 
 limited within that which is limitless. Here am I 
 placed " upon this bank and shoal of time" between 
 two eternities the denizen of a little isle amid an 
 immeasurable ocean ! My vision can reach but a 
 brief space into the vast profound that environs me 
 above and below, on the right hand and on the left ; 
 and although my spirit, as it makes excursions into 
 creation, can discern much that is good and great, fair 
 and admirable, it is still perplexed and baifled in its 
 contemplations " shadows, clouds and darkness rest" 
 upon its views, till, from its own depths, like the sun 
 from the nether hemisphere, springs the sublime dis 
 covery that there is a God ! 
 
 In the stillness of a star-lit night, you may have 
 cast your eyes over some fine landscape, and as you 
 traced the glimmering circuit of the woods, and 
 recognized the dark masses of the mountain-range, 
 and saw the stars reflected in the river s bosom, and 
 
ME. NAIENE S ADDEESS. 169 
 
 descried the mansions, turreted and gray, or less 
 picturesque and less hallowed by time, rising through 
 the shade, and humanizing the whole scene with the 
 interests and occupations of man as you stood, 
 gazing and musing, you have said within yourselves 
 "How fair would this prospect be were the round 
 moon now pouring her lustre on river, and wood, and 
 dwelling, and hill ; and how passing fair, when it lies 
 glowing in the full sunshine that at once discloses 
 and exalts its loveliness !" Nay, the very pleasure 
 with which, even in the night, you behold it, is 
 mainly owing to your recollection of its daylight 
 glories, or of something similar ; and you can scarcely 
 fancy the dim and dull impression it would make 
 upon a being who could not fill up its proportions 
 from such recollection, and body forth its hidden 
 features, in the exercise of an imagination which had 
 been informed by the actual survey of the unveiled 
 beauties of nature. It is even so witli Creation when 
 contemplated apart from a Creator ! It is even so 
 with the present condition of things wlwn regarded 
 apart from a God of justice and goodness, holiness 
 and truth the very God whom the Bible describes. 
 Without a God, there lowers a most perplexing 
 obscurity over the whole. I can discern beauties, 
 but they are clouded ; harmonies, but, when I at 
 tempt to track them, they fade in the infinity of the 
 
ME. NAIENE S ADDEESS. 
 
 surrounding darkness ; design, but it is only frag 
 mentary, and not seldom apparently frustrated ; 
 operations, benevolent, and, to some extent, effectual, 
 but often cruelly interfered with, and rendered dis- 
 tractingly abortive ; something grand and graceful, it 
 is true, but shadowy and evanescent, dreamy and 
 dubious, without be^rinninsr and without end ; and I 
 
 7 O O 
 
 am puzzled to account for interruptions, and vacuities, 
 and discrepancies, and disturbances, and feel intensely 
 the need of some superior illumination to irradiate 
 the entire field of view, and dispel the mystery a 
 mystery as much of confusion as of vastness that 
 broods over everything before me. Chains of causa 
 tion I can partially trace, but I discern no Omnipotent 
 Hand from which they are suspended ; goodly fabrics 
 of antecedent and consequent I can see, but no Rock 
 of ages on which their foundations are laid; motion I 
 perceive, but no Prime Mover ; regularity, but no 
 Regulator ; law, but no Law-giver ; life, but no 
 Fountain of life ; scattered portions of truth, but no 
 great Being who is the substance of truth in whom 
 all truth centres, and of whose nature all truth is only 
 the disclosure and the outward expression ! Now, 
 tlie master-key to the wliole of tliis mystery is the 
 existence of a Supreme Creator and Rider. The forth- 
 flashing of this grand fact is the dayspring from on 
 high, which, illuminating the Kosmos, brings to our 
 
MR, NAIKKE S ADDEESS. 171 
 
 view its order and dependence its origin and its 
 end ; enables us to walk surely, like those who walk 
 at noon, instead of groping and peering like those 
 who walk in darkness ; and gives rest to the soul s 
 weary wings, by presenting an ultimate object where 
 on, in common with the entire universe, the exploring 
 spirit reposes from its travel, and is satisfied. 
 
 When I first look up to the heavens, I behold 
 nothing save an expanse of splendid confusion a 
 high o erarching canopy glittering with lights of 
 spiritual brightness. Their distances are all the same 
 to my vision, and they appear scattered over the 
 mighty concave at random. No sound issues from 
 the aerial dome no living thing can be discerned 
 walking amidst these lamps; and when they 
 themselves are, at length, discovered to move, their 
 march is tardy and without array ; for they fall not 
 into ranks, and some of them seem to wander even 
 from their own circles. Amid the multiplicity of 
 luminaries, there is still obscurity. The stars are still 
 the stars of night. Whence are they, I ask, and what 
 are they ? What is their nature and what their use ? 
 Is the frame-work, in which they are inlaid, really a 
 firmament a substantial, resisting roof and do they 
 stud its surface merely to regale my eyes, and exer 
 cise my curious fancy ? I cannot tell ! 
 
 As yet I cannot tell : but let me grasp the torch of 
 
1Y2 MR. NAIRNE S ADDRESS. 
 
 science. The astronomer demonstrates that those 
 lamps are orbs probably worlds like our own ; that 
 they revolve in paths of geometric symmetry, although 
 so vast that the whole vault overhead is too limited 
 a scroll to exhibit such a portion of those paths as 
 would determine their figures to our sight ; and that, 
 throughout all space, there prevails a law which gov 
 erns the huge globes wherewith its amplitudes are fill 
 ed, and, under this law, that which originally appears 
 disorder is regularity, far more accurate and exquisite 
 than that of the most ingenious and delicate of human 
 contrivances. Now I begin to approach towards 
 satisfaction. The firmament, I find, is not a solid 
 crystalline canopy; neither is there any longer dis 
 order among the starry train. My mind now cleaves 
 the depths of space, and, to the glance of science, 
 mechanism, stupendous both in magnitude and har 
 mony, is disclosed in its mighty and mysterious 
 recesses. But after all I am not yet content. My 
 spirit pants with the majesty of its own discoveries. 
 I am confounded by the very grandeur which has 
 been evoked. Amidst an illimitable universe I stand 
 awe-struck and baffled, as if, too daring in my curios 
 ity, I had intruded, under guidance of a potent genius, 
 into a region of sublimity where even he might fear 
 to tread. Here it is, however, that the still small 
 voice of my inmost reason is answered by the celestial 
 
MB. NAIKNE S ADDEESS. 
 
 oracle of Kevelation; and tlie two, blending into 
 harmony, proclaim " God is, and God reigneth !"- 
 Witliin the infinite domain where I had penetrated, 
 they point me to a throne, and to a Sovereign seated 
 thereon. The Almighty Maker and Mover is seen ! 
 My wonder now becomes adoration ; my astonishment 
 is exalted into reverence. The insecurity, the uncer 
 tainty, and the absence of cause, which oppressed my 
 soul, are now gone. It no more falters amid unex 
 plained marvels. It has risen to the summit of truth, 
 and from that empyreal height it sees, like a seraph 
 on the battlements of Heaven, the whole creation 
 roll beneath it, without shock and without confusion ! 
 The light which the astronomer kindled was sufficient 
 only to show the vastness of the prospect. Dimness 
 and doubt still lay upon its inimitably receding 
 depths. It was still the landscape without the sun. 
 The God who said 
 
 "Let Newton be," 
 
 was still Himself to be revealed ; and then, but not 
 till then, all became really light; and the orbs of 
 the sky were perceived to obey His voice, and their 
 splendor seen to be an irradiation from the " co-eter 
 nal beam of the Eternal" the " light which no man 
 can approach" 
 
 " Bright effluence of bright essence uncreate !" 
 
174 
 
 ME. NAIRNES ADDRESS. 
 
 It is thus that the existence of a God forms the 
 Key-stone of the entire structure of knowledge. His 
 being is the grand truth, that, like the central sphere 
 of our solar system, gathers all others around it, and 
 harmonizes them, all, and sheds light upon them all, 
 and infuses life into them all ; and he, that would 
 shut out this truth from his investigations, seems to 
 me scarcely so wise as the man who should make his 
 own chamber his universe, and content himself with 
 examining its paltry appointments by the glimmer of 
 his own taper, while he jealously excluded every ray 
 coming from the fair and illuminated world beyond 
 its walls. 
 
 The Bible tells us that, before man was made, the 
 earth was replenished with every green and every 
 breathing thing. The garden was planted and wa 
 tered, and it teemed with life and beauty. Streams 
 sparkled in the sun, breezes whispered in the shade, 
 fruits glowed upon the boughs, flowers enameled 
 the sward and opened their fragrant bosoms to the 
 day, birds warbled among the bowers of Eden, 
 beasts sported on its glades, and all creation awaited 
 the advent of creation s lord, whose immortal mind 
 was capable of ruling it, and appreciating the proofs 
 of wisdom, power, and goodness which, though ex 
 isting in their own frames and functions, the creatures 
 themselves were unable to comprehend. And surely 
 
NAIUNE S ADDRESS. 
 
 it is no vain or improbable imagination to fancy the 
 first man picturing to himself, how unfinished and un 
 satisfactory would have been the curious work before 
 him, had he who was its crown and glory not been 
 produced, and invested with dominion over it. We 
 can still further fancy his procedure, as, in the exer 
 cise of his newly-awakened consciousness, he must 
 have inquired into the secret of his own being- 
 gazing for a while on external things, and then turn 
 ing to his own body, perusing his own limbs, trying 
 his own powers, and, when he found all so fitly and 
 surprisingly made, questioning the creatures already 
 formed, as if they, with thought and speech like his 
 own, could tell him whence and what he was, and 
 conjecturing, in the fullness of his doubt and wonder, 
 what all the enchantment about him could mean, till, 
 amid his delight and perplexity, he at length hears and 
 knows the voice of God, and, bending with instinct 
 ive reverence before His presence, learns from the Di 
 vine utterance the mystery of his own existence and 
 destiny, and the explanation of the manifold other 
 existences that encompassed him on every side. Such 
 an incident as this would come upon him with all the 
 cheerfulness and certainty of light. His undefined 
 desires it would both bring to shape and satisfy, and, 
 like the discovery of any other great principle, it 
 would reduce to order, and clearness, and unity, that 
 
ME. NAIENE S ADDEESS. 
 
 which, without it, or something equivalent to it, 
 would have forever remained to him a problem 
 incapable of solution. 
 
 Now, this stroke of Milton s imagination, which I 
 have adapted to my present purpose, is not produced 
 as a fact, but as an illustration. It is most eminently 
 natural. To be sure, there is none of us in circum 
 stances similar to those of Adam with reference to 
 the knowledge and theory of creation. The existence 
 of a Creator and Supreme Ruler is part of our earliest 
 and most familiar belief; and thus it is that we are 
 under the necessity of making a strong effort to ap 
 preciate the sudden and self-evidencing power of a 
 discovery like that which we suppose to have been 
 made to him. Nevertheless, on making such an 
 effort, the result will be powerfully felt, and we shall 
 perceive that, in order to give unity, consistency, and 
 intelligibility to the universe, both in its physical 
 relations and in its moral aspects, we are compelled 
 to admit the being of a God. It is the principle of 
 affinity which gives unity to Chemistry of gravita 
 tion which gives unity to Astronomy of conscience 
 which gives unity to Ethics of propitiation which 
 gives unity to Christianity of life which gives unity 
 to animals of personality which gives unity to the 
 human being; and, in like manner, the universe 
 is not felt to be One seems not a Kosmos, but a 
 
MR. NAIRKE S ADDRESS. 
 
 stupendous puzzle, until reason starts, and Revelation 
 confirms, that greatest of all truths, that God is, and 
 that God reigneth the Maker, Mover, and Father 
 of all 
 
 In the second place, I seize this public and appro 
 priate opportunity of declaring that, from no superfi 
 cial study of its evidences both historical and internal, 
 I am steadfast in the belief that the Bible is the word 
 of God that the inspiration of the sacred writers is 
 no mere theological name for the intuitions of 
 human genius that "thus saith the Lord" means 
 literally and simply " thus saith the Lord" and that, 
 with the trifling exception of accidental mistakes 
 common to all books that have been multiplied by 
 transcription, the Holy Scriptures contain truth with 
 out mixture of error. I am fully aware that the 
 Bible was not given to instruct men in science and 
 philosophy, and that its language is the language of 
 the people, not of sages and savans. I am further 
 most fully aware that we are now in possession of a 
 critical apparatus a method of interpreting ancient 
 writings which implies not only a grammatical famil 
 iarity with their dialect, but likewise a historical fa 
 miliarity with the speculative opinions and modes of 
 thinking, common to the age and country in which the 
 
 writers of them lived. And I am still further aware 
 12 
 
178 ME. NAIBKE S ADDKESS. 
 
 that the researches of travelers and antiquaries, and 
 the labors of scientific men astronomers, geograph 
 ers, geologists, naturalists, metaphysicians, ethnologists, 
 and even chemists have cast light on many portions 
 of Scripture, and enabled critics to improve the inter 
 pretation of them, so that apparent discrepancies 
 between science and revelation have been reconciled, 
 and those things which, at first, were difficulties, have 
 actually become demonstrations. Of all these facts I 
 am most fully aware ; and, in view of them all, I affirm 
 that were my investigations in philosophy to land me 
 in a result that is clearly at variance with the well- 
 ascertained import of the Divine Word, I would stop 
 short instantly, assured that I was either wrong in 
 my philosophical principles, or faulty in my logical 
 deductions ; and I would earnestly retrace my steps, 
 and search diligently till I had found where my error 
 lay. Others may call this timidity or even bigotry 
 if they choose. I call it reA^erential caution ; and 
 I freely confess that I should neither have the fool- 
 hardiness to intrude anti-christian theories upon the 
 undergraduates of a College, nor the dishonesty to 
 retain a position, where I should be compelled to in 
 culcate doctrines which I did not most firmly believe. 
 According to my view which is also that of St. 
 Paul and, therefore, the correct one the grand 
 central idea of the Gospel is atonement by sacri- 
 
ME. NAIENE S ADDEESS. 179 
 
 fice. Now, it is certain that the great "mystery 
 of godliness God manifest in the flesh," is altogether 
 beyond the ken of human philosophy. German 
 rationalists and their disciples may tell me that every 
 man is an incarnation of Divinity, and their words, 
 when they so speak, may not be destitute of mean 
 ing ; but of this I am very sure, that they do not 
 mean what St. John says, when he announces that 
 the " Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." 
 This truth is a matter of pure revelation. Neverthe 
 less, although our philosophy could never have solved 
 the divine problem for which the Word became in 
 carnate how shall God be just, and yet the justifier 
 of sinners ? philosophy assuredly does point us, with 
 no uncertain indication, to the necessity of a Redeem 
 er, and hints not obscurely that our Redeemer must 
 be Almighty. A short demonstration of these facts 
 will terminate the present address, and show, in a 
 sufficiently intelligible way, how philosophical investi 
 gation may be applied to questions of the highest 
 practical moment. 
 
 The knowledge and the power of man being both 
 limited, he may not be able, in the first place, to form 
 a perfect conception of an end which he desires to 
 accomplish; and, in the second place, he may not 
 have sufficient skill to devise and adapt the means 
 whereby it may be accomplished perfectly. His con- 
 
180 ME. NAIKNE S ADDKESS. 
 
 trivances may be faulty, either by excess or by defect. 
 The material chosen may not be the most suitable, 
 and it may be improperly distributed. There may 
 be a superfluity of strength in one part, and a 
 deficiency in another, and the application of his 
 machinery may, and in fact generally does, admit 
 of improvement. In short, his advances towards per 
 fection are necessarily tentative and experimental. 
 He does not produce it at once by intuition or in 
 stinct, as the bee constructs its cells and the bird its 
 nest. And as it is with man s material contrivances, 
 so also it is with his schemes of moral and intellect 
 ual mechanism. In government, in education, and in 
 philanthropic enterprise, he proceeds by trial and 
 error, and does not arrive at the best plan till after 
 many a failure and many an alteration. 
 
 But God, on the contrary, being infinite in wisdom 
 and infinite in power, knows at once the very end He 
 would gain, and the very means that are requisite to 
 gain it. This is an obvious deduction from the very 
 notion of Godhead. And the truth, thus emanat 
 ing from a source a pi^iori, is exemplified in all the 
 contrivances and arrangements of the universe. In 
 God s works there is neither defect nor superfluity. 
 The power employed is most precisely proportioned 
 and adapted to the work that is to be done. If the 
 whale, for instance, requires to dive to depths in the 
 
MR. NAIRKE S ADDRESS. 181 
 
 ocean where the pressure would be destructive to 
 other creatures, it is made strong in proportion to 
 that pressure. If the eagle must soar heavenward, its 
 bones and quills are made light, and if it must battle 
 with the storm, they are likewise made strong. If 
 the habitat of a fish is the dark waters of the Mam 
 moth Cave, the creature is unprovided with eyes, but 
 in the feline family, which seek their prey in the 
 night-time, the organ of vision is capable of extraor 
 dinary enlargement. The tribes of the sea have no 
 fountain of tears wherewith to lubricate the eye-ball, 
 because they need none ; but the dwellers on the land 
 are furnished with the necessary secretion. And so 
 on, throughout all nature, there is nothing superfluous 
 and nothing defective. In cases of human mechanism, 
 where calculations, involving the profoundest mathe 
 matical principles, have been made to determine the 
 exact medium between excess and defect, it has been 
 found that the Creator had anticipated the solution 
 of the difficulty. " During the latter part of the last 
 century," says Edgar Allan Poe " the question 
 arose among mathematicians, to determine the best 
 form that can be given to the sails of a wind-mill, 
 according to their various distances from the revolv 
 ing vanes, and likewise from the centres of the revo 
 lution. This is an excessively complex problem ; for 
 it is, in other words, to find the best possible position 
 
182 ME. NAIRNE S ADDRESS. 
 
 at an infinity of varied distances, and at an infinity 
 of points on the arm. There were a thousand futile 
 attempts to answer the query, on the part of the most 
 illustrious mathematicians ; and when, at length, an 
 undeniable solution was discovered, men found that 
 the wings of a bird had given it with absolute pre 
 cision ever since the first bird had traversed the air." 
 The cells of the honey-comb afford another and more 
 familiar example of the same law. They are so con 
 structed as to give the utmost room that is compatible 
 with the utmost stability and compactness. There is 
 no loss of space and yet no diminution of strength.* 
 
 * As if to demonstrate the existence and rigid authority of this law in the 
 most emphatic manner possible, we find it extended even to the region of the 
 supernatural. The miracles of Scripture, although exceptional, as unusual 
 exhibitions of Divine power, are not exceptional in respect of the law which 
 v:c are now considering. First of all, no miracle is performed unless the 
 occasion plainly justifies and demands it. The rule that Nature dictated to a 
 heathen poet, and by which she guided his predecessors, is the actual rule of 
 God in the testimony borne by Omnipotence to Truth 
 
 " Nee deus Intersil nisi dignus vindice nodus." 
 
 A needless miracle would be unworthy of Heaven, and incredible to enlight 
 ened men. But further, in the working of the miracle itself, all that can be 
 done, by human power and ordinary means, is commanded to be done. If 
 water is to be made wine, the water-pots are filled by the hands of men. It 
 would have been as easy to create the wine at once, but, in that case, the law 
 of nothing superfluous and nothing defective would have been violated. If 
 the leper is to be cured, he must wash seven times in the waters of Jordan 
 and be clean. If the withered hand is to be restored, the patient must him 
 self make an eifort to stretch it forth. If dead Lazarus is to be raised, men 
 must roll the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre, and when he comes forth 
 bound hand and foot, they must unloose the grave clothes and let him go. 
 Even in the two miracles of feeding the multitudes, the baskets of fragments 
 
ME. NAIKNE S ADDRESS. 183 
 
 I am aware that there are some seeming exceptions 
 to the rule which I wish to demonstrate. For in 
 stance, the rain that would cheer the thirsty ground 
 in a season of drought, and save the fruits of the 
 earth for the use of man, may return from the clouds 
 to the ocean, or fall upon the sterile sand ; while at 
 other times the labors of the husbandman may be 
 deluged from on high, and his wealth swept away by 
 the torrent that gathers among the hills. But that 
 the rain is wasted even on the sea or the sand, would 
 be far too much for us to affirm ; and no believer in 
 Providence will find difficulty in rightly interpreting 
 the variations and hazards that attend the cultivation 
 of the soil. In fact, we know too little of mete 
 orology to decide what advantage may arise to the 
 whole globe from the phenomena of the sky ; but we 
 know enough of nature s works to be assured that 
 every phenomenon must accord with the law for 
 which I am now contending. 
 
 Up to this point, however, I have said nothing of 
 
 were not superfluous but intentional ; because, besides being gathered up for 
 future use, they afforded the Saviour the very opportunity he sought and 
 planned, of inculcating care and frugality that nothing might be lost. This les 
 son was, in fact, a Divine proclamation of the law in question that in God s 
 doings there is no deficiency and no redundancy. The same Being, who 
 created food in the lonely place for his hearers, could have done so for himself 
 when he hungered in the wilderness ; but the miracle was not needed, and, 
 therefore, it was not performed. Thus the multiplying of the loaves and 
 fishes, which, at first glance, appears to contradict our principle, really goes 
 to confirm it in every particular. 
 
184 >IR. NAIKKE S ADDEESS. 
 
 the proportion between the powers and the work of 
 intellectual and moral beings. This, indeed, is the 
 very question which we are required to determine. 
 But the condition of man is obviously excluded from 
 our argument : for it is upon man s condition as a con 
 clusion that the entire argument is intended to bear ; 
 and except in so far as we can perceive, in the present 
 state of humanity, indications of primeval perfection, 
 the whole of our inductive evidence must necessarily 
 be analogical. 
 
 Excluding man, then, the nearest approach to intel 
 ligence in terrestrial nature is the instinct of ani 
 mals ; and it was once my purpose to relieve the 
 tedium of our present investigation by adducing illus 
 trations of the law now under discussion, from that 
 interesting field of Natural History. Such a course, 
 however, would prolong this address beyond all due 
 bounds ; and I, therefore, content myself with a 
 general statement of fact that, while every instinct 
 that is necessary for the comfort and preservation of 
 brutes is bestowed upon them, they possess, in their 
 natural condition, none that are superfluous. When 
 any of them are domesticated by man, they are 
 rendered so far artificial, and some of their original 
 instincts may thus become useless. But in their wild 
 state these instincts are indispensable. The dog, which 
 now turns round several times before lying down to 
 
ME. NAIENE S ADDEESS. 185 
 
 sleep, is only practicing in domesticity the gyration 
 by which his ancestors hollowed out their lairs in the 
 wilderness. Hence we have the strong analogy of 
 instinct to add to the evidence already adduced, that 
 the powers of every creature are exactly proportioned 
 to the work which that creature has to perform. 
 
 Whether or not there are any spiritual beings 
 between man and God is a question which mere philo 
 sophy does not enable us to decide. It is the general 
 belief of the human race that there are such beings ; 
 and the testimony of Scripture, which reveals the 
 existence of Angels as a matter of fact, coincides 
 with this general belief. A dogma of revelation, 
 however, cannot be used as a link in any chain of 
 purely philosophical argument. All the aid that we 
 are entitled to claim from the Bible is the fact, that 
 everything therein declared concerning the nature of 
 Angels is in perfect accordance with the conclusions 
 which I have already drawn from the attributes of 
 God. These pure spirits are always represented as 
 busy in the service of their Lord. They rest not day 
 and night. Their devotion to God is entire ; and not 
 a single hint is dropped to the effect that any of their 
 power is ever kept back, or diverted, from the work 
 that their Creator has assigned them. Their duty and 
 their delight is to employ all their faculties, at all times, 
 and in all their available strength, in the service of 
 
186 MR. NAIKKE S ADDKESS. 
 
 Him from whom these faculties were derived. There 
 is not one circumstance in this representation which 
 conflicts with our notions of justice and propriety. 
 Everything is exactly as we should judge it to be 
 from the relation of spirits to the Father of Spirits. 
 We feel assured that, if there really are spirit 
 ual creatures superior to ourselves, the law of their 
 duty to God is precisely that which the Bible de 
 scribes. 
 
 But though it would be illogical to pass, in an 
 argument of this kind, from reason to revelation 
 when reason fails us, it is manifestly lawful to rest 
 upon well-attested historical facts, whether these are 
 facts of Jewish or of Gentile history. Now, the ap 
 pearance and ministry of angels I hold to be his 
 torical facts. No candid critic can confound them 
 with the fables of Greek and Roman mythology. I 
 am, therefore, justified in assuming that the general 
 belief of mankind on the question of superhuman 
 spirits is correct ; and this being the case, my rational 
 apprehension of Ethical relations assures me that 
 their power and their duty are most scrupulously 
 proportioned to each other, and that such of them as 
 have not abused their spiritual liberty do fulfill their 
 duty to the very letter. 
 
 If, then, the law of exact correspondence and pro 
 portion between power and work extends over both 
 
ME. NAIRNE S ADDRESS. 
 
 the highest and the lowest of God s creatures, it were 
 most unreasonable to imagine that man, who stands 
 between the brute and the angel a compound of 
 the animal and the spiritual can be exempted from 
 the rule that applies to the animal and the spiritual 
 alike. When we find man doing other work than 
 his God s, the rational inference is not that his 
 capacities of intelligence, feeling and will are insuf 
 ficient for the attainment of the end of his being 
 but that his original condition has undergone a 
 change that he has abused his moral freedom, and 
 is a rebel against the law. Most unwarrantable it 
 were to suppose that the law has been abrogated in 
 his favor, or even in the smallest degree relaxed. 
 The existence of the law is manifest ; its foundation 
 lies in the relation of creature to Creator, from which 
 relation the creature, man, can claim no exemption ; 
 and what can be more reasonable than the employ 
 ment of God s own gifts in God s own service, and in 
 nothing else ? The law, indeed, is not only reason 
 able but supremely benevolent ; for the only solid 
 happiness lies in strict obedience to its commands. 
 Bird, beast, reptile, fish and insect are all happy in 
 the exercise of their instincts, and the use of their 
 powers. To do the bidding of the Most High con 
 stitutes the blessedness of angels. And every human 
 being, who has abandoned his rebellion and returned 
 
188 ME. NAIKNE S ADDKESS. 
 
 to his allegiance, is forward to proclaim that lie never 
 knew substantial enjoyment till now.* 
 
 We thus find that the conclusion for which I have 
 been contending is supported both by considerations 
 a priori, and by examples drawn from every region 
 of nature; and we are abundantly warranted in 
 affirming that every creature has a work to do for 
 his Creator, and that his Creator has furnished him 
 with powers precisely proportioned and adapted to 
 that work. The work does not exceed the powers, 
 and the power is not greater than the work. It is 
 thus manifestly impossible that a creature can ever 
 do more than his duty to God ; and consequently, in 
 
 * The aphorism of the Great Teacher is at once natural and true: "Unto 
 whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required." The whole law 
 of the creature lies in this Divine announcement ; and it is fully illustrated in 
 the parables of the talents and pounds, and of the wise and foolish virgins. 
 I cite another passage of Scripture to the same effect. It is this : " Whether 
 ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." The precept 
 is quite general. All that we do, even to the most common and necessary 
 actions, is to be done not unto ourselves, nor to any other creature but to 
 the glory of Him who made us. I need not, therefore, dwell on that aspect 
 of the command. I prefer to inquire what is meant by eating and drinking 
 to God s glory. Manifestly, not that which some suppose namely, eating 
 and drinking with thankful hearts. Doubtless, gratitude to Providence for our 
 daily bread is a good thing, and a duty ; but I cannot believe that that idea 
 exhausts the significance of an expression so remarkable as the one in ques 
 tion. The real and full meaning of the passage is clearly this : that, in the 
 matter of eating and drinking, we are bound to eat and drink of such things, 
 and in such quantities, and at such times, as will maintain our powers, both 
 mental and bodily, in the highest possible state of efficiency and endurance, 
 for the service of our Lord and Master. Excess, on the one hand, and absti 
 nence, on the other, are equally derelictions of duty, unless some absolute 
 necessity, or some higher duty, intervenes to modify our practice. 
 
ME. JSTAIKNE S ADBKESS. 189 
 
 case of failure, lie can make absolutely no compensa 
 tion in case of arrearage, future payment is utterly 
 beyond his own ability. Any accumulation of crea 
 ture merit is an obvious absurdity ; and so there 
 never can be a surplus to atone for a single moment s 
 idleness, or a single moment s relaxation beyond that 
 rest which may be really required by the creature s 
 constitution. If the faculties of an angel are nobler 
 than those of a man, the angel has a more arduous 
 task to perform ; and both man and angel are bound, 
 by the relation of creature to Creator, to employ con 
 tinually their whole available power in their Crea 
 tor s service. And more than this, they are also 
 bound to take good care that no abuse of any sort 
 neither of improper exertion, nor of sensual indul 
 gence shall diminish their power, on the one hand, 
 and that no exercise shall be neglected, on the other, 
 which may increase its efficiency, according to the 
 appointed law of such increase. There is no allow 
 ance for indolence, or carelessness, or irregular activ 
 ity ; far less for positive perversion. Should the duty 
 of any man ever call for over-exertion, and conse 
 quent destruction of power, the sacrifice is required 
 by his present abnormal condition. In a perfect state 
 no such demand can be made ; for no such sacrifice 
 can be necessary. 
 
 Now, keeping fully in mind what I have thus 
 
190 ME. NAIENE S ADDEESS. 
 
 demonstrated respecting the duty of man, and the 
 relation of his original power to that duty, let me 
 attempt the proof of a second proposition, which, 
 after its establishment, I shall ask you to connect with 
 the first, so as to draw a conclusion from a compari 
 son of the two. 
 
 My second proposition is the following : The 
 scheme of God in creation and providence is progress 
 ive : not in the sense of proceeding by trial and 
 error, as the schemes of men do ; but in the sense of 
 proceeding from perfection to further perfection. 
 
 If you reflect on the connection of cause and effect, 
 as exhibited in the universe, you will find that no 
 cause is followed by one effect only. There may, 
 indeed, be, and there usually is, one effect of which 
 the given cause is more particularly the antecedent ; 
 but, in addition to this prominent effect, there are also 
 minor and collateral effects which must be ascribed 
 to the same cause ; and each of these effects becomes, 
 in its turn, a cause destined to produce so many sepa 
 rate series of new effects, and so on ad infimtum. 
 The propagation of effects is thus like the propagation 
 of a race of animals or vegetables from a parent 
 stock. In fact, the indefinite propagation of organ 
 ized creatures is just an instance of that causal pro 
 gression whereof I am now speaking. Perpetual pro 
 gress is, therefore, a necessary result of the great law 
 
ME. NAIENE S ADDEESS. 191 
 
 of cause and effect. From the Almighty First Cause, 
 as from the centre of power, streams of causation are 
 forever radiating, and forever widening, in a multi 
 plied efficiency, towards the outer regions of unlim 
 ited space, and through the endless ages of infinite 
 time. 
 
 But I will not rest the demonstration of our second 
 proposition, any more than I did that of our first, 
 upon mere a priori considerations. It will be more 
 interesting to you, and quite as much to our present 
 purpose, if I can lead you, by a brief induction of 
 particular cases, to a satisfactory establishment of the 
 general law. 
 
 From an examination of the rocks which compose 
 the crust of our earth, and the organic remains that 
 are therein imbedded, we find that this world has 
 undergone a succession of wonderful changes, in 
 which creation after creation, each perfect in its kind, 
 has been destroyed, and by which the globe has been 
 gradually prepared for the comfortable habitation of 
 the human race. The geological history of the earth 
 is one of the sublimest retrospects that scientific re 
 search affords. Through the mighty and mysterious 
 ages of the past, mortal and irrational creatures have 
 been employed as the precursors and pioneers of the 
 rational and immortal, and we believe that, after one 
 change more, all of the latter that has become liable 
 
192 MR. NAIRNE S ADDRESS. 
 
 to death shall be re-endowed with immortality, and 
 not a bone of man shall continue in the dust. The 
 ground shall give up its human dead not in frag 
 ments and fossils for the instruction of superior 
 beings but living, and to live forever, in their 
 renovated abode. 
 
 Again rising from the earth to the heavens, we dis 
 cover there appearances which go to prove that there 
 is a similar creative progression in other worlds besides 
 our own. There seems sufficient truth in the nebular 
 hypothesis, to warrant the conclusion that the realms 
 of space contain systems in all stages of formation, 
 from the most chaotic and rudimentary, up to those 
 which we are wont to call perfect. Creation nowhere 
 springs at once to the highest beauty, but unfolds its 
 glories by degrees. The eternal Maker lays his com 
 mands on matter, and He, to whom a thousand years 
 are as one day, guides it obediently, through count 
 less ages, to its destined end. 
 
 Returning to our own earth, we there perceive the 
 same law of progress in detail, which we have already 
 observed in the general. The life force in animals 
 and vegetables builds up bodies for them by a gradual 
 process of assimilation and growth, and matures in 
 them the germs of future generations ; so that from 
 one tree may spring a forest, and from one pair the 
 population of a planet ; and in the higher region of 
 
ME. NAIRKE S ADDEESS. 193 
 
 human personality, the intellectual, aesthetical, and 
 moral powers work out, by continued effort, the ad 
 vancement of science, and art, and liberty. In spite 
 of reverses and vicissitudes, and transmigrations from 
 one country to another, civilization, and knowledge, 
 and government are perpetually moving forward, on 
 the whole. "Antiquitas seculi, juventas mundi." The 
 human family as a family are not only older, but 
 wiser, and better, and happier now than ever they 
 were since first they peopled the earth. The com 
 parative barbarism, that has overrun some ancient 
 fields of refinement, is more than compensated by the 
 higher culture of others, and by the gladness of many 
 a primeval wilderness that has been made to rejoice 
 and blossom as the rose. 
 
 On the whole, then, and not to weary you by fur 
 ther induction, I venture to affirm that progress from 
 one degree of perfection to another is a law which 
 the Almighty has been pleased to enact for His own 
 operations, and for the continued felicity of His ra 
 tional and responsible creatures. Of the progres 
 sion that is visible in material things, I need say 
 nothing more. The notice of it was necessary only 
 to fortify our second proposition, as I did the first, 
 by analogy. I crave your particular attention to the 
 progress of the intellectual and moral universe, and 
 to the fact, that the very nature and necessities of 
 
 18 
 
194 ME. NAIBKE S ADDEESS. 
 
 spiritual creatures compel us to believe, that the same 
 increase of power and enjoyment which we discern 
 in the human race is also a law to every rational and 
 accountable subject of the King of kings. "We know 
 enough of our own souls to feel assured that, were it 
 not for the perishable bodies wherein they dwell, 
 their capacity of improvement is indefinite ; and con 
 sequently, in the case of pure spirits, there can be no 
 limit to the accumulating strength acquired by per 
 petual exercise. 
 
 Let us now connect our two propositions, and see 
 what conclusion will result from them. 
 
 Every creature has a work to perform, and power 
 enough, but not more than enough, to perform it. 
 As the power increases by continued exercise, the 
 work increases in exact proportion. The ratio of the 
 two is always a ratio of equality. We have thus, in 
 the universe of God, a perpetually augmenting power 
 and a perpetually augmenting work a continued 
 progress which will never have an end a vast pro 
 cession of intelligence and virtue, ever mounting and 
 ever hastening towards loftier heights of knowledge, 
 righteousness, and holiness. Should any creature, or 
 any company, in that universal march, stop short in 
 the exercise of their faculties sit down indolently 
 by the way, or absolutely commence to struggle back 
 ward against the advancing host thus wasting their 
 
ME. NAIENE S ADDEESS. 195 
 
 strength in vain perversity, tell me, I pray you, what 
 consequences would follow ? The grand procession 
 hurries on with ever-growing power and speed. The 
 loiterers and mutineers are left behind, losing vigor, 
 both of intellect and will, every moment of their 
 stay. The distance between them and their former 
 fellows is ever, ever widening, while their own capa 
 cities for good are ever, ever diminishing. Their 
 perdition is deepening by a double acceleration. The 
 case is clearly a hopeless one hopeless, most hope 
 less unless God himself can open up an avenue of 
 hope! 
 
 Turn aside with me, therefore, and gaze on this 
 great sight this wondrous procession of angel and 
 archangel, cherubim and seraphim ! Onward and 
 upward tread incessantly these unfallen sons of 
 God ! Failing in no duty since they first were made, 
 they have ever been mounting from glory to glory, 
 and from strength to strength. Their intelligence 
 has been perpetually expanding, and their knowledge 
 has been perpetually augmenting. Their affections 
 have been continually deepening, and fresh objects of 
 affection have been continually supplied as their ca 
 pacities enlarged. Their moral sense has been always 
 acquiring new vigor, their will has been always grow 
 ing more resolute, and their lapse into disobedience 
 has been evermore becoming less and less possible. 
 
196 ME, NAIENE S ADDEESS. 
 
 It is a marvelous panorama that we have now before 
 us ! Not the sons of Genius, struggling upwards, 
 with panting breath and many a slip, to some mythic 
 immortality on the heights of Olympus or of Heli 
 con not these, but the sons of Almighty God, bright 
 with eternal youth, and strong with ever-growing 
 strength tasked to the full, but never overstrained 
 exultant in their ascent as the eagle in its flight 
 marching up the highway to the heaven of heavens, 
 while the splendors of the holy place cast on their 
 path a brighter glory than the sunshine, and the 
 chorus of triumph swells from rear to van of the 
 magnificent procession ! Not the stars of heaven 
 not suns, with their planetary trains, sweeping on 
 ward through space not galaxies rushing in cycles 
 that baffle computation, yet still returning whence 
 they came as the appointed ages roll away not 
 these grand orbs, but spirits immortal, each more 
 precious than a thousand stars, advancing forever 
 and forever towards that Sanctuary where sitteth 
 the Father of Spirits "high-throned above all 
 height" unapproachable, yet "altogether lovely," 
 and still disclosing new beauties to His children as 
 they rise ! 
 
 But where is man in this majestic progress what 
 place holds he in the universal host ? He, too, was 
 destined to a post in the procession, and, though the 
 
ME. NAIENE S ADDEESS. 19*7 
 
 last of God s children, was not the least in His regard. 
 Angels would not have disdained his company, nor 
 would his voice of joy have been discordant with 
 their song. He, no less than they, would have pro 
 ceeded from perfection to perfection his capacity, 
 like theirs, forever growing and. forever full ! But 
 man is confessedly a deserter from the army of the 
 Lord of Hosts. The most orthodox believer bears 
 no stronger testimony to this fact, than does the zeal 
 ous reformer, who frequently would compensate for 
 the scantiness of his creed by the extent of his phi 
 lanthropy. Forsaking the ranks of Heaven, and in 
 league with the rebellious, man has met the fate of 
 the dupe in his apostacy. He now strays and strug 
 gles in the wilderness struggles with its entangle 
 ments, seeks a home in its spots of transient verdure, 
 and strays further and further from the way of life. 
 His faculties have been perverted, his affections have 
 been misplaced, and his will has been depraved. 
 Sloth has enervated him, passion has wasted his vigor, 
 and he either sits down or retrogrades, while the 
 universe hastens on ! The interval between where he 
 is and where he ought to be is perpetually lengthen 
 ing, and the cumulative power, that was due to his 
 continued exercise in holiness, is irrevocably gone. 
 Never, even though he desired it, can he overtake 
 his former companions ; neither, though he could over- 
 
198 ME. NAIENE S ADDEESS. 
 
 take them, lias he now the strength to keep pace with 
 them in their accelerating march. They are now 
 stronger than they were, and he, to all true good, is 
 weaker. Desolate and helpless as Israel in the House 
 of Bondage desolate and helpless as the captives 
 who hung their harps upon the willows, and wept by 
 the rivers of Babylon desolate and helpless as the 
 daughter of Zion bowing in sorrow beneath the palm- 
 tree desolate and helpless as the prodigal who, far 
 from love and home, would fain have fed on unclean 
 husks desolate and helpless as these, he sits him 
 down and who shall bear him across the space that 
 intervenes between him and the post he should have 
 held who shall replace the strength that he has 
 squandered in iniquity, and supply the power that he 
 ought to have gained in the practice of righteousness ? 
 Manifestly,, not himself; for at no period had he more 
 power than he needed, and now he has far less. 
 Manifestly, not an angel r nor an army of angels, for, 
 though they may pity the apostate, they have no 
 power to spare. Manifestly, no created thing mani 
 festly, none but the Omnipotent none but One who 
 is absolute and independent One who can interpose, 
 with the fullness of underived and unclaimed might, 
 to seek and to save the ruined. 
 
 " How charming is divine Philosophy !" How 
 
MR. NAIRKE S ADDRESS. 199 
 
 charming at all times, but especially how charming 
 when she thus leads us to the portals of Divine Reve 
 lation, and the response of the Holy Oracle harmo 
 nizes with the voice of Reason ! There really is an 
 Almighty Redeemer an Omnipotent One that lays 
 hold on wretched man, and bears him to where he 
 should have been in the universal march ; and who, 
 from the riches of His grace, can furnish more than 
 all the energy that man has lost I " Who is this that 
 cometh from Edoni ; with dyed garments from Boz- 
 rah ? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in 
 the greatness of his strength?" It is I "I that 
 speak in righteousness, mighty to save." 
 
 From the hour that this Deliverer espoused our 
 cause, the door of hope was opened, and the free 
 favor of Heaven, descending to bless this blighted 
 earth, prevented its degenerating into a pandemo 
 nium. Divine mercy, that heretofore might have been 
 heard of by the hearing of the ear, but which no 
 eye had yet seen in actual operation this new attri 
 bute of Godhead, like a new system in immensity, 
 was disclosed to the admiration of angels and men. 
 From that blessed hour, captive after captive began 
 to be released. Death, the avenger, was made the 
 herald of eternal life, and the grave of the now 
 mortal body become the gate of glory to the still 
 immortal soul. From that hour, the noble work of 
 
200 ME. NAIKKE S ADDKESS. 
 
 emancipation emancipation to light and power as 
 well as freedom has been going on ; multitudes of 
 the rescued have been welcomed to the celestial throng ; 
 and we believe for our natural expectation is un 
 quenchable, and the oracles of prophecy assure us 
 that a day of triumphant restoration is drawing 
 nigh. It is written ! it is sealed in heaven ! and the 
 fullness of time shall reveal it all ! And when the 
 great day shall come at last, there shall be such a 
 merry-making in the universe as has not been since 
 of old the morning stars sang together; for the 
 crowning act of a new and nobler creation shall have 
 been brought to a close. The Celestial Host, whose 
 glory lighted the plains of Bethlehem, and whose 
 anthem echoed along its hills, shall again unfold their 
 splendors and take up their song ; and Earth below, 
 no longer mute as in the beginning, but vocal 
 throughout all her realms, shall send back her joyous 
 response to the gates of Paradise. The mountains 
 shall break forth into singing ; the fields shall clap 
 hands on every side ; the glorious strain shall ring in 
 the harping of the woods; streams shall murmur 
 praise as they flow ; and ocean shall uplift his music 
 of many waters in concert with the quiring winds ; 
 the stars shall peal notes of gratulation from their 
 spheres ; the great sun shall roll through all his deep 
 tones of rejoicing ; the ransomed themselves shall lead 
 
ME. NAIENE S ADDEESS. 201 
 
 the mighty jubilee with " blest voices uttering joy;" 
 while the vaulted sky, like a high temple-roof, shall 
 resound the glad chorus of a renovated world, and a 
 race at length made free ! 
 
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