[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 [Greek: pasa ge taphos]?