Page:(1856) Scottish Philosophy—The Old and the New.pdf/5

Rh safely have left the verdict of these gentlemen to be dealt with by the sure justice of public opinion. I could very well have trusted to time and the growing intelligence of the country, for the correction of the misrepresentations of my assailants. A man, who has laboured without much intermission for five-and-twenty years, at the organization of the most disorganized and difficult of all the sciences, has encountered (experto credite) sorer and more vexatious obstacles in the construction of his work, than any he is ever likely to find thrown in his way, either by obtuseness or malignity, after it has been completed—impediments of nature's raising, which are much more baffling than those of man's fabrication. The long discipline of patience and anxiety through which he has passed in his toilsome probation towards truth, is not calculated to make such a man either impatient for his reward, or fretful about losing any honours contingent upon patronage, or susceptible of much emotion when the winds of calumnious opposition are blowing strong. It fosters in him no disposition to squabble with his critics; it rather indisposes him for such displays. Hence, I had resolved that no earthly consideration should ever tempt me down into the arena of philosophical disputation, much less into the forum where municipal proceedings are discussed. But, when I find that the patrons of the metropolitan University—the appointed guardians of the liberties of knowledge—have thought fit to impose a public prohibition on the progress of metaphysical discovery, and have thus manifested a spirit much at variance, as one may hope, with the mind of an enlightened people—when I consider the danger to which the highest interests of reason and of truth are exposed by the course which these patrons have taken,—when I reflect on the self-reproach which I must have endured hereafter, had I permitted, without a timeous protest, the science in which I take a pride, and which has no reason to be ashamed of me, to be degraded from its lofty vantage-ground by their levelling standard;—when I foresee that what has been done now, might furnish a precedent (if passed over without animadversion) for worse doings in the days to come—when I think of these things, I feel compelled to violate