Introductory discourse delivered before the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York, on the fourth of May, 1814 / By De Witt Clinton.

  • DeWitt Clinton
Date:
1815
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory discourse delivered before the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York, on the fourth of May, 1814 / By De Witt Clinton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSE. $ grasp, yet that their cupidity could be amply gratified by the abundant ! products of the soil. The settlement of this country was thus made with a view to the acquisition of wealth; knowledge was out of the question. ‘The attachments of the emigrants, like their origin, were exotic; the land of their adoption was considered as secondary and inferior, in every respect, to the Jand of their nativity ; and their anxious eyes were con- stantiy directed to the period when they could retura to their native soit laden with the bounties of the new world. This country was also planted atatime when the intellectual world was involved in cimmerian dark- ness. ‘The scholastic philosophy was the reigning knowledge of the times;—a philosophy of words and notions, conversant only in logical distinctions, abstractions, and subtleties; which left real science wholly uncultivated to hunt after occult qualities, abstract notions, and objects of impertinent curiosity. This system, which was founded by the com- . mentators on Aristotle, who were called profound, irrefr agabie, and an- zelic doctors, corrupted every department of knowledge and maintained its supremacy for several centuries. The stagyrite was even considered as entitled to the honours of an evangelist; and Melancthon complains that his ethics were read to the people, instead of the gospel, in sacred assemblies. In this great serbonian bog the human mind lay ingulfed, entranced, and bewildered for ages; and the glimmering rays of light which the peripatetic philosophy shed over the world, were confined to the cloister and the college. . At this peried this country was first settled _by the countrymen indeed of Erasmus and of Grotius ; but the works of Erasmus were locked up in latin ;—Grotius was scarcely known, and few of our ancestors were acquainted with the first elements of knowledge. They settled here under the auspices of a dutch west-india company, and when the province was surrendered to the english, in 1674, no advan- tages resulted to the cause of knowledge. Charles II. was a witty sen- sualist—James I]. was a contracted bigot—William of Orange was a mere soldier. The constellation of intellectual luminaries which shone in the augustan age of England diffused but little light across the Atlan- tie : the two first of the Brunswick kings had neither knowledge them- selves, nor did they value it in others; and with the third dynasty we gneasured swords, and a severance of the empire ensued. There is something in the nature of provincial government whicls tends to engender faction, and to prevent the expansion of intellect. It inevitably creates two distinct interests; one regarding the colony’ as subservient in every respect to the mother country, and the other rising up in opposition to this assumption. The governor and principal ma~- gistrates, who derive their appointments from an extrinsic source, feel independent of the people over whom they are placed. The ope- ration of this principle has been powerfully experienced i in our territg- sial governments, which have been the constant theatre of intestine di- sigions; and when the human mind is called away from the interest af