Dr WhewelPs Inaugural Lecture. 5 



proved a vast body of arts. Parchment and paper, printing 

 and engraving, glass and steel, compass and gunpowder, 

 clocks and watches, microscopes and telescopes, not to speak 

 of the marvels of architecture, sculpture, and painting, all 

 had their origin and progress, while the sciences of recent 

 times were in their cradle, or were unborn. The dawn of 

 the sixteenth century presented, as it were, a Great Exhibi- 

 tion of the works which men had been producing from the 

 time of the downfall of Roman civilization and skill. There, 

 too, might be seen, by him who travelled from land to land, 

 beautiful textures, beautiful vessels of gold and bronze, of 

 porcelain and glass, wonderful machines, mighty fabrics ; and 

 from that time, stimulated by the sight of such a mass of the 

 works of human skill, — stimulated still more by the natural 

 working of those powers of man from which such skill had 

 arisen, — men were led to seek for science as well as art ; for 

 science as the natural complement of art, and fulfilment of 

 the thoughts and hopes which art excites ; — for science as 

 the fully developed blossom, of which art is the wonderfully 

 involved bud. Stimulated by such influences, the scientific 

 tendencies of modern Europe took their starting impulse from 

 the Great Exhibition of the productions of the middle ages 

 which had accumulated in the sixteenth century ; and have 

 ever since been working onwards, with ever-increasing vigour, 

 and in an ever-expanding sphere. 



As the successful scientific speculations of the last three 

 centuries have been the natural sequel to the art-energies of 

 the preceding ages, so must the newest scientific speculations 

 of our contemporaries and their successors, in order to be 

 successful, be the result and consequence of the powers, as 

 yet often appearing in the undeveloped form of art alone, 

 which exist among us at the present day. And thus a great 

 spectacle of the works of material art ought to carry with it 

 its scientific moral. And the opportunities which we have 

 lately had of surveying the whole of the world in which art 

 reigns, and of appreciating the results of its sway, may well 

 be deemed too valuable to be let slip for the purposes of that 

 scientific speculation which is the proper sequence of such oc- 

 casions. So it has seemed to those who have from the be- 



