It Is Knowledge That Equalizes The Social Condition
Of Man - That Gives To All, However Different Their Political Position,
Passions Which Are In Common And Enjoyments Which Are Universal.
Knowledge Is Like The Mystic Ladder In The Patriarch's Dream.
Its base
rests on the primaeval earth - its crest is lost in the shadowy splendour
of the empyrean; while
The great authors, who for traditionary ages
have held the chain of science and philosophy, of poesy and erudition,
are the angels ascending and descending the sacred scale, and
maintaining, as it were, the communication between man and heaven. This
feeling is so universal that there is no combination of society in any
age in which it has not developed itself. It may, indeed, be partly
restrained under despotic governments, under peculiar systems of
retarded civilization; but it is a consequence as incidental to the
spirit and the genius of the Christian civilization of Europe as that
the day should follow night, and the stars should shine according to
their laws and order. Why, the very name of the institution that brings
us together illustrates the fact - I can recall, and I think I see more
than one gentleman around me who equally can recall, the hours in which
we wandered amid
"Fields that cool Ilyssus laves.
At least, there is my honorable friend the member for Stockport (Mr.
Cobden), who has a lively recollection of that classic stream, for I
remember one of the most effective allusions he made to it in one of
the most admirable speeches I ever listened to.
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