MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 21 



brief a period of historical time the acquisition of such knowledge has been 

 permitted, we must feel that, vast as it seems, it may be but a very small part 

 of the patrimony of truth destined for the possession of future generations. 



In reviewing the nature and results of our proceedings during the last 

 twenty-seven years, and the aims and objects of our Association, it seems as 

 if we are realizing the grand Philosophical Dream or Prefigurative Vision of 

 Francis Bacon, which he has recounted in his " New Atlantis." In this noble 

 parable the father of Modern Science imagines an Institution which he calls 

 " Solomon's House," and informs us by the mouth of one of its members, 

 that " The end of its Foundation is the Knowledge of Causes and Secret 

 Motions of Things; and enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire to the 

 effecting of all things possible." As one important means of effecting the 

 great aims of Bacon's "six days' college," certain of its members were 

 deputed, as "merchants of light," to make "circuits or visits of divers 

 principal cities of the kingdom." This latter feature of the Baconian organ- 

 ization is the chief characteristic of the " British Association." But we have 

 striven to carry out other aims of the " New Atlantis," such as the systematic 

 summaries of the results of different branches of science, of which our pub- 

 lished volumes of "Reports" are evidence; and we have likewise realized, in 

 some measure, the idea of the " Mathematical House " in our establishment 

 at Kew. The national and private observatories, the Royal and other scien- 

 tific Societies, the British Museum, the Zoological, Botanical, and Horticul- 

 tural Gardens, combine in our day to realize that which Bacon foresaw in 

 distant perspective. Great, beyond all anticipation, have been the results of 

 this organization, and of the application of the inductive methods of interro- 

 gating nature. The universal law of gravitation, the circulation of the 

 blood, the analogous course of the magnetic influence, which may be said to 

 vivify the earth, permitting no atom of its most solid constituents to stag- 

 nate in total rest; the development and progress of Chemistry, Geology, 

 Palaeontology ; the inventions and practical applications of Gas, the Steam- 

 engine, Photography, Telegraphy, such, in the few centuries since Bacon 

 wrote, have been the rewards of the followers of his rules of research. 

 Prof. O. then dwelt on the importance of direct observation, as illustrated in 

 the history of Astronomy referred to the discovery of Galileo, the appli- 

 cation of his discovery by Kepler and Horrocks, and continued : Without 

 stopping to trace the concurrent progress of the science of motion, of which 

 the true foundations were laid, in Bacon's time, by Galileo, it will serve here 

 to state that the foundations were laid and the materials gathered for the 

 establishment by a master-mind, supreme in vigor of thought and mathe- 

 matical resource, of the grandest generalization ever promulgated by science 

 that of the universal gravitation of matter according to the law of the 

 inverse square of the distance. The same century in which the "Thema 

 Coeli " of Lord Verulam and the " Nuncius Sidereus " of Galileo saw the 

 light, was glorified by the publication of the " Philosophic Naturalis Prin- 

 cipia Mathematica" of Newton. Has time, it may be asked, in any way 

 affected the great result of that masterpiece of human intellect? There are 

 signs that even Newton's axiom is not exempt from the restless law of 

 progress. The mode of expressing the law of gravitation as being " in tfie 

 inverse proportion of the square of the distances " involves the idea that the 

 force emanating from or exercised by the sun must become more feeble in 

 proportion to the increased spherical surface over which it is diffused. So 

 indeed it was expressly understood by Halley. Professor Whewell, the ablest 



