ate the building of walls for the Bridal
city of Science, in which no man will care to identify the particular
stones he lays, rather than complying farther with the existing
picturesque, but wasteful, practice of every knight to throw up a feudal
tower of his own opinions, tenable only by the most active pugnacity,
and pierced rather with arrow-slits from which to annoy his neighbours,
than windows to admit light or air.

[Note 23: I trust that the Society will not consider its privileges
violated by the publication of an essay, which, for such audience, I
wrote with more than ordinary care.]

176. The paper read at our last meeting was unquestionably, within the
limits its writer had prescribed to himself, so logically sound, that
(encouraged also by the suggestion of some of our most influential
members), I shall endeavour to make the matter of our to-night's debate
consequent upon it, and suggestive of possibly further advantageous
deductions.

It will be remembered that, in reference to the statement in the Bishop
of Peterborough's Paper, of the moral indifference of certain courses of
conduct on the postulate of the existence only of a Mechanical base of
Morals, it was observed by Dr. Adam Clarke that, even on such mechanical
basis, the word "moral" might still be applied specially to any course
of action which tended to the development of the human race. Whereupon I
ventured myself to inquire, in what direction such development was to be
understood as taking place; and the discussion of this point being then
dropped for want of time, I would ask the Society's permission to bring
it again before them this evening in a somewhat more extended form; for
in reality the question respecting the development of men is
twofold,--first, namely, in what direction; and secondly, in what social
relations, it is to be sought.

I would therefore at present ask more deliberately than I could at our
last meeting,--first, in what direction it is desirable that the
development of humanity should take place? Should it, for instance, as
in Greece, be of physical beauty,--emulation, (Hesiod's second
Eris),--pugnacity, and patriotism? or, as in modern England, of physical
ugliness,--envy, (Hesiod's first Eris),--cowardice, and selfishness? or,
as by a conceivably humane but hitherto unexampled education might be
attempted, of physical beauty, humility, courage, and affection, which
should make all the world one native land, and [G