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members then, contribute to the advancement of science, when they 

 communicate to the Society either the unrecorded facts which they 

 have observed, or the results of their scientific experiments, or the 

 general laws which they have established by processes of inductive 

 reasoning, or improvements which they have effected in the instruments 

 of observation, or in the calculus by which their reasonings are effected. 

 The Society again, as a body, co-operates to this direct advancement 

 of science, when, after winnowing the important from the unimpor- 

 tant, it gives to the world in its Transactions, such communications 

 as, in its judgment, are fitted either to extend the field or to facili- 

 tate the acquirement of useful knowledge. But perhaps the indirect 

 action of this and similar societies is more important than these 

 its formal and visible products ; nay, I know not whether the best 

 answer to the question, What is the use of the Ptoyal Society ? would 

 not be, that it is useful by bringing together, into familiar inter- 

 course, men of science and men of letters — men of similar and of 

 different views. Solitary study is requisite even for the most mode- 

 rate attainment of knowledge ; but a solitude unbroken by intercourse 

 with other minds, is apt to generate, in scientific men, an overesti- 

 mate of their own powers and performances, and a doting fondness 

 for notions which are commonly described by the term crotchets. 

 Now every man of vigorous and inquiring intelligence, and so far 

 constitutionally qualified to become a man of science, who, by being 

 brought into competition with his equals, and under the influence of 

 his superiors, is induced to moderate his self estimation, and to 

 abandon his crotchets, is thereby rendered a better, wiser, and more 

 useful man than he was before. I need not again refer to the more 

 obvious use of familiar intercourse among the professors and the 

 lovers of science, of the labour and time that may be saved by the 

 friendly communication of difficulties, or of the overcoming of diffi- 

 culties, and by everything which tends in science to that generous, 

 unselfish co-operation, which is the source of strength and pro- 

 gress in all artistic, commercial, and social life. Every great sub- 

 ject has some dark side; and, next to the unholy contests of intolerant 

 religionists, I know nothing more melancholy than the disputes of 

 men of science respecting priority of invention and discovery ; to see 

 them too evidently acknowledging, that not the discovery of truth, 

 but the credit of having discovered it, is the stimulus and the reward 

 to which they are looking. 



