1873.]

[Footnote 175: Read at the November meeting of the Metaphysical
Society.]

[Footnote 176: I quote from memory but am sure of the purport of the
sentence, though not of its expression.]

[Footnote 177: "And be it death proclaimed through our host to boast of
this."--_Henry V._]

* * * * *

AN OXFORD LECTURE.

(_Nineteenth Century, January 1878._)

* * * * *

AN OXFORD LECTURE.[178]

278. I am sure that all in this audience who were present yesterday at
Dr. Acland's earnest and impressive lecture must have felt how deeply I
should be moved by his closing reference to the friendship begun in our
undergraduate days;--of which I will but say that, if it alone were all
I owed to Oxford, the most gracious kindness of the Alma Mater would in
that gift have been fulfilled to me.

But his affectionate words, in their very modesty, as if even standing
on the defense of his profession, the noblest of human occupations! and
of his science--the most wonderful and awful of human intelligences!
showed me that I had yet not wholly made clear to you the exactly
limited measure in which I have ventured to dispute the fitness of
method of study now assigned to you in this University.

279. Of the dignity of physical science, and of the happiness of those
who are devoted to it for the healing and the help of mankind, I never
have meant to utter, and I do not think I _have_ uttered, one irreverent
word. But against the curiosity of science, leading us to call virtually
nothing gained but what is new discovery, and to despise every use of
our knowledge in its acquisition; of the insolence of science, in
claiming for itself a separate function of that human mind which in its
perfection is one and indivisible, in the image of its Creator; and of
the perversion of science, in hoping to discover by the analysis of
death, what can only be discovered by the worship of life,--of these I
have spoken, not only with sorrow, but with a fear which every day I
perceive to be more surely grounded, that such labor, in effacing from
within you the sense of the presence of God in the garden of the earth,
may awaken within you the prevailing echo of the first voice of its
Destroyer, "_Ye_ shall be as gods."

280. To-day I have little enough time to conclude,--none to review--what
I have endeavored thus to say; but one instance, given me directly in
conversation af