(1852, November 2) The Evening Courant, p. 3.Philosophical Institution Public Lecture—29 October 1852, Segment 4.
still the sacred flame demands a sustaining fuel during all the years of our mortal pilgrimage, and that our middle ages and our declining days require to be supported and cleared by the acquisition of new intellectual resources. Out of this conviction has sprung the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution. It is founded on the truth, now so generally recognized, that education is continually progressive—progressive not only in the race, but in the individual—that is not finished at school, that it is not finished at college—that, by a very law of nature, every period of human life craves enlightenment, and that, amid the engrossing pursuits of his professional life, if a man cannot be happy unless he has the liberty and the opportunity for of cultivating those more liberal and enlightened tastes, which find their gratification only in the subjects of universal interest to mankind. To meet that natural demand, to satisfy those intellectual affections and aspirations of the people, this institution has arisen; and it has endeavored to fulfill its location in a spirit commensurate with those wants on the part of the public, to which it owes its existence and its prosperity. We should form a mistaken estimate of the purposes of this institution if we were to suppose that its only, or even that its main object, was to furnish the means of instruction to those who, by the accidents of their position have lacked, or have enjoyed but to a limited extent, the advantages of the scholastic or academical training. That, no doubt, is one of the beneficial aims which this society endeavors to overtake. To impart useful and interesting information to those who, in the early life, may have been placed in circumstances unfavorable to the acquisition of knowledge, is one of the objects which it keeps constantly in view; and surely I am not wrong in affirming that, under the judicious administration of its directors, and through the efficient services of its lecturers, that object, in the years that have already run, has been abundantly secured. But that is not the only or principle purpose which it labours to accomplish. It embraces a wider design; it rests on a broader foundation. Its intention is not to repair the intellectual deficiencies of any single class of the community, but to kindle in the hearts of all classes, and, above all, to keep alive in the breast, even of our most highly-educated citizens, that love of literature and science, that desire of knowledge and intellectual culture, which are the sources of the purest pleasures, but which the pressing evocations of their active life (unless benignly counteracted) tend to deaden or repress. The Philosophical Institution entered on its labours animated by the determination to adapt its instructions to the wants of the whole community, and not limit them to the necessities of any particular section; and, following out this enlarged conception, it is hitherto run so prosperous a career, that there can be now no doubt as to the wisdom of its planned, and no misgivings as to the success which, in the future years, will accompany its exertions. The details which the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution comprehend in its plan are worthy of our highest approbation, and must command the applause of every well-wisher to a
