60 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. 



ingly fixed point where we thought to terminate a definite object of inquiry — 

 then the boundaries recede — fresh objects and novel contemplations pour in 

 upon us on every side, multiplying and becoming more wonderful and more 

 worthy our attention at every step. From these accumulating scenes the 

 humble man (and true philosophy will make its votary humble) learns the little 

 that he can, and in understanding that little, becomes not only better acquainted 

 with himself, but gains a more correct and exalted knowledge of his Maker, — 

 while the vain who pride themselves in a fancied knowledge too often fail, not 

 only in these, but in contemplating as they ought the coming scenes of 

 futurity." . 



SCIENTIFIC LECTURES AT KIDDERMINSTER. 



The Committee for conducting the affairs of the Kidderminster Public 

 Library having long felt the want of a Scientific Institution in that 

 populous and increasing town, to meet the general taste for really useful 

 knowledge, at length determined to arrange a course of lectures on 

 scientific and philosophical subjects, which should tend to give a new 

 impetus to the feeling of the inhabitants, and gratify their numerous and 

 highly respectable subscribers. On this being made known to Thomas 

 Bradley, Esq. the respected High Bailiff of the borough, that gentleman 

 with the utmost urbanity and politeness, granted the use of the Town- 

 hall for the purpose, and on Monday, the 12th of January, R. J. Streeten, 

 Esq. M. D., of Worcester, opened the course with an introductory lecture. 



We regret to be compelled to abridge this admirable lecture so closely, 

 that it can hardly be said to bear more than a slight sketch of the 

 original discourse. 



The lecturer, after shewing the manifold advantages to be derived from dis- 

 cussing and investigating the various topics of scientific inquiry, pointed out 

 the important benefits resulting from the practical application of demonstrative 

 knowledge considered with relation to our external comforts — ^but the most in- 

 fluential advantage connected with these pursuits, he observed, was that arising 

 from the culture of the intellectual powers and consequent elevation of the mind. 



" If man, considered as a sentient being (he observed), is in any way raised 

 above the beasts that perish, it is surely by the possession of those reasoning 

 faculties — those powers of observation, of reflection, of comparison, and of judg- 

 ment, which, whatever advantages he may derive from the peculiarities and 

 perfection of his organization, still constitute the main distinctive marks between 

 him and the whole race of animated beings. And if this be true, the cultivation 

 of these faculties must necessarily raise him in the scale of being. One, then, of 

 the prominent advantages of the cultivation of science, perhaps the most prominent, 

 is the raising of our race from the debased condition in which we too often find 

 some of its members delighting to revel — a condition which is only distinguished 

 from that of the brute creation by the additional degradation arising from the 

 prostitution of the powers of mind, as well as those of body, in the grovelling 

 pursuits of the mere animal principle." 



" To cultivate science for its own sake ; — for the sake of the gratification and 

 amusement we derive in the acquisition of the many curious facts which it unfolds, 

 is a pure and delightful recreation ; — to cultivate it for the good which may result 

 to our fellow creatures, in the addition to their bodily comforts and the general 

 improvement of their external circumstances, is an object worthy of the philan- 

 thropist ; — but to cultivate it as a means of advancing the moral and intellectual 

 condition — of affording not only facts, whereupon to exercise the powers of 

 the mind, but as a means of developing those powers, is a still higher aim. It is the 

 aim, the object of every one who wishes his fellow-men to take that rank in the scale 

 of being which the Almighty Creator has assigned to them. And yet this is not the 

 loftiest flight, this is not the noblest end to which the investigation of the powers, 



