S48 Professor Forbes's Address to the British Association. 



attempt at extension or accumulation : if in many cases it does 

 promote such extension, it is indirectly, and beyond a doubt 

 has sometimes had the opposite tendency. The intellectual 

 wealth of mankind is no more increased by this operation, than 

 is the weight of the precious metals under the hand of the gold- 

 beater. A greater display may indeed be attained, and a more 

 commodious application to the useful and the elegant purposes 

 of life ; but for actual increase of the stock which may here- 

 after be fashioned with ease and expedition by the hands of a 

 thousand artificers, we must recur to the miner toiling in his 

 solitary nook, and to the labourer who painfully extracts some 

 precious grains from the bed of the torrent. It is the further- 

 ance of this species of productive energy that the British Asso- 

 ciation claims for its capital object. The diffusion of a taste 

 for science amongst its numerous members is no doubt also one 

 of the most necessary and most desirable consequences of the 

 principles upon which it is founded ; but it is not the basis of 

 these principles. To teach those who have never pursued na- 

 tural knowledge but as an occasional amusement, — to feel that 

 for them a field lies open which to-morrow they may call their 

 own, — to lend them such aid as may promote the success of 

 their exertions, by removing the preliminary difficulties, and 

 pointing out the existing boundary betwixt the known and the 

 unknown, — to stimulate these exertions and those of others who 

 have already become, to a certain degree, familiarized with the 

 labours and with the results of intellectual toil, by enabling 

 them to mix with the veterans in each department who have 

 gained, and who still continue to gain, the highest rewards 

 which the investigation of nature confers, — who will point out 

 the methods which they pursued, the disappointments which 

 they met, and the difficulties which they surmounted, thus af- 

 fording at once the gratification which every generous mind 

 feels in personal communication with those who have signalized 

 themselves by intellectual achievement, and the instruction and 

 encouragement for the pursuit of a similar course which words 

 and words alone can impart, — these we hold out as amongst the 

 first and the most valuable objects proposed to be attained by 

 the institution of this Association. 



No doubt societies for the promotion of Natural Knowledge 



