Some debatable questions and how to solve them : an address delivered at the opening of the session, 1883-4, before the Birmingham and Edgbaston Debating Society / by Sampson Gamgee.

  • Gamgee, Sampson, 1828-1886.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some debatable questions and how to solve them : an address delivered at the opening of the session, 1883-4, before the Birmingham and Edgbaston Debating Society / by Sampson Gamgee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    HOW TO SOLVE THEM. Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Committee having approved a suggestion,, to open this Session of the old Birmingham and Edgbaston Debating Society with an Address from the Chair, I ask your attention to some observations, which I trust may not be deemed unworthy your notice, on '■'•Some Debatable Questions, and how to solve the?n. It cannot too often be repeated that every question, whether of opinion and taste, or of fact and inference, is open to debate. Pope tells us, that 'Tis with our judgments as our watches—none Go just alike, yet each believes his own. There seems good reason to believe that no amount of discus- sion can bring about a consensus of opinion on such questions as: Who is the greatest epic poet? What are the relative merits of Hallam and Lingard, as historians ?—of Dickens and Thackeray, as novelists?—of Donizzetti and Mozart, as writers of operatic music ? Here is scope for the widest difference of opinion and taste, and anyone who debates such questions has themes of ever- charming freshness, for his own and others' intellectual delectation and sustenance. There is no fixed standard by which such mat- ters can be judged. But even in subjects in which it might be deemed possible to establish a rule of judgment on matters of fact, agreement is often