“The other evening you heard the comments of our brethren as to the great money value of a knowledge of the near future; but not one word was said as to what an incalculable boon to the human race would be the revelation of the general condition of men, morals, law, liberty, and all things great and small, at each decade yet to come. You may have heard me remark, almost unconsciously, that such knowledge of the future was not so impossible as one might think; and the exclamation may have impressed you, if at all, with an idea of the mental irresponsibility of the one who uttered it. But I think that I can convince you, who are the first to whom I have addressed myself on the subject save my dear wife--now gone before me--that my remark was not only compatible with the soundest mental powers, but warranted by a degree of special study and training, a duration of special application, far beyond the usual. “I was long ago impressed with the idea that many of those long-past occurrences about which learned historians disagree, could be cleared up by the light of induction; that as like causes have ever produced like effects, any causes, however remote in time, might be deduced from their effects, if only the records were sufficiently full and accurate, and the method sufficiently philosophical and thorough. It seemed, for instance, unreasonable that so great discrepancies should exist as to names and arrangements of rulers, and commencement and duration of dynasties, of those very Hykshos, or Shepherd Kings, of whom I spoke the other night in those sacred precincts. Manetho (according to Josephus), states that they reigned five hundred and eleven years, but cites only reigns amounting to two hundred and sixty years; while Africanus makes the duration of those reigns two hundred and eighty-four years, and Eusebius one hundred and three. Africanus makes the Shepherds consist of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth dynasties, and to have ruled nine hundred and fifty-three years, but gives the names and reigns of only one, which he calls the fifteenth, while Eusebius claims it to have been the seventeenth. Bronsen makes their rule end 1639 B. C.; Lipsius, 1842 B. C.; yet if we place the discovered date of Thothmes III. (1445 B. C.) in his sixteenth year, the close of the Hykshos dominion must have been about 1500 B. C.