This winter he joined with eight or nine of Hamilton's most
distinguished students in forming the "Metaphysical Society," which
met weekly for the purpose of discussing philosophical questions. In a
Memoir which he afterwards wrote of John Clark, one of the founders of
this Society, he thus describes the association that led to its being
formed, and that was further cemented by its formation: "Willingly
do I recall and linger upon these days and months, extending
even to years, in which common studies of this abstract nature bound
us together. It was the romance--the poetry--of speculation and
friendship. All the vexed questions of the schools were attempted by
our united strength, after our higher guide had set the example. The
thorny wilds of logic were pleasant as an enchanted ground; its driest
technicalities treasured up as unspeakably rare and precious. We
stumbled on, making discoveries at every step, and had all things
common. Each lesson in mental philosophy opened up some mystery of our
immortal nature, and seemed to bring us nearer the horizon of absolute
truth, which again receded as we advanced, and left us, like children
pursuing the rainbow, to resume the chase. In truth, we had much of
the character of childhood in these pursuits--light-heartedness,
wonder, boundless hope, engrossment with the present, carelessness
of the future. Our old world daily became new; and the real world of
the multitude to us was but a shadow. It was but the outer world,
the _non-ego_, standing at the mercy of speculation, waiting to be
confirmed or abolished in the next debate; while the inner world, in
which truth, beauty, and goodness had their eternal seat, should still
survive and be all in all. The play of the intellect with these subtle
and unworldly questions was to our minds as inevitable as the stages
of our bodily growth. Happy was it for us that the play of affection
was also active--nay, by sympathy excited to still greater liveliness;
and that a higher wisdom suffered us not in all these flowery mazes