On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    found public opinion sinking into a state of apathetic unbelief ; the necessary consequences of ably-disputed and feebly-supported orthodoxies . And I may add that , though Plato and Wesley did

    much to restore to the world an earnest sincerity in the person believing , they did far too little to advance the world into plain truth in the thing believed . The main reason of this was , that Plato was himself a deceiver of the people , and taught others to deceive them ; and that Wesley was self-deceived ., and taught

    others to deceive themselves . The consequence of these master mechanics of the human mind labouring to restore an unwholesome power to imagination was a wretched contest between Platonic heathens and Platonic Christians ; and will be , unless the danger is averted , an equally wretched contest between the fanatics of anti-naturalism , and the sceptics of materialism . But let us hope better things ; namely , that a sound discipline of physical science may be employed to correct the errors and reestablish the truths of the science of causation ; so that , in

    accordance with the very meaning of the term metaphysics , physics may be the wide and solid basis , and metaphysics the grand and steady superstructure . The facts of physics are indeed the data on which the conclusions of metaphysics ought to be so founded , that , the premises being indisputable facts , and the reasoning incontrovertible argument , the conclusions must be as true as the premises are real .

    I repeat what I have asserted , that it is the intellectual and moral , and I may add , that it is the political necessity of the present times , that the human mind must pass on from an unsound metaphysics to a sound physics , in order that it may be enabled to return from a sound physics to a sound metaphysics . There must be a Dail y Bread , in order that there may be a Deliverance from Evil ; and there must be a Deliverance from Evil in order that His Kingdom may come and His Will may be done .

    The question , then , which immediately presents itself is—how must we teach ' Physics , the Properties of Matter , to such audiences as are found in small country-towns ? Again I must urge our guarding against attempting" too much . Unless we adopt great simplicity of plan , we shall fail of success . In a

    word , if a Mechanics' Institution in Marlborough should take the Physical Lectures of the London Mechanics' Institution as its model , it requires little foresight to see that it will not succeed as fully as if it had suited its discipline more accurately to its knowledge . ?

    In this place the numerous and rapidly succeeding facts of the experimenter , together with his many and close reasonings , can be followed with profit ; because your previous information and habits of mind have fitted you for the discussion of such subjects But in a small country town there will be but few whose minds

    Untitled Article

    The Diffusion of Knowledge amongst the People . 273

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 273, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/41/