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Certain events have got me interested in the Philosophical Society of England, a body of which I know little, but of which it might be instructive to know more. Whitaker has no more to say of it than that its secretary is the Rev. Henry Thompson, who lives at Twickenham—and he is none other than the gentleman whom I mentioned as the recipient of the honorary degree of Ph.D. from the Academie et Universite Internationale, run under the joint auspices of Mr. Henry Chellew and an unidentifiable Prince Eugene, Duke of Athens. How Mr. Thompson comes to be "Rev." I am not clear, though he appears to have been once a lay reader in the Church of England. Further research reveals the fact that the President of this learned body is the Rev. Isaac Harlin, D.D., LL.D.
These degrees, I take it, have been acquired late in life, for Mr. Hartill, when he retired from the Congregational ministry in 1935, appeared to enjoy no such distinctions. But Mr. Hartill lives in an aura of degrees. His Philosophical Society fairly drips with them. Here, for example, are the officials of the Northern Branch of the Society : H. B. Martin, Esq., F.Ph.S. (Eng.), F.B.0A. (not Orthodox Academy, surely ?), P.R.S.A.; P. W. L. Brown, Esq., F.Ph.S.(Eng.), F.R.S.A., M.R.S.L., while the Newtonian Society, of which the versatile Mr. Hartill is also President, rejoices in a Vice-President, Mr. L. M. Parsons, who is D.I.C., D.Sc., LL.D., F.G.S., and F.Ph.S., no less. And to think of the years and the money some of us spent on a mere meagre B.A. There is not much sans le savoir about these philosophes.
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