THE EOYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN 213 



tlie advancement of these that the specific objects of the Institution must ulti- 

 mately depend. It follows that the dissemination of physical and chemical 

 knowledge becomes a truly essential part of the design of the lloyal Institu- 

 tion ; and this department must, in the natural order of arrangement, be anterior 

 to the application of the sciences to practical uses. To exclude all know-ledge 

 except that which has been already applied to immediate utility, would be to 

 reduce our fiiculties to a state of servitude, and to frustrate the very purposes 

 which we are laboring to accomplish. No discovery, however remote in its 

 nature from the subjects of daily observation, can with reason be pronounced 

 wholly inapplicable to the benefit of mankind. 



'' It has seemed to me, therefore, to be not only the best beginning, but also an 

 object of high and permanent importance in the plan of the Royal Institution, 

 to direct public attention to the cultivation of the elementary doctrines of nat- 

 ural philosophy, as well speculative as practical. Those who possess the genu- 

 ine spirit of scientific investigation, and who have tasted the pure satisfaction 

 arising from an advancement in intellectual acquirements, are contented to pro- 

 ceed in their researches, without inquiring at every step what they gain by their 

 newly discovered lights, and to what practical purposes they are applicable ; they 

 receive a sufficient gratification from the enlargement of their views of the con- 

 stitution of the universe, and experience, in the immediate pursuit of knowdedgc, 

 that pleasure which others wish to attain more circuitously by its means. And 

 it is one of the principal advantages of a liberal education, that it creates a sus- 

 ceptibility of an enjoyment so elegant and so rational. 



''A considerable portion of my audience, to whose information it will be my 

 particular ambition to accommodate my lectures, consists of that sex Avhich, by 

 the custom of civilized society, is in some measure exempted from the more labo- 

 rious duties that occupy the time and attention of the other sex. The many 

 leisure hours which are at the command of females in the superior orders of soci- 

 ety, may surely be appropriated, with greater satisfaction, to tlie improvement of 

 the mind and the acquisition of knowledge, than to such amusements as are 

 only designed for facilitating the insipid consumption of superfluous time. The 

 hours thus spent will unquestionably become, b-y a little habit, as much more 

 agreeable at the moment, as they must be more capable of affording self-appro- 

 bation upon refiection. And besides, like the seasoning which reconciled the 

 Spartans to their uninviting diet, they will even heighten the relish for those 

 pursuits which they interrupt ; for mental exercise is as necessary to mental 

 enjoyment, as corporal labor to corporal health and vigor. In this point of 

 view, the lloyal Institution may in some degree supply the place of a subordin- 

 ate university to those whose sex or situation in life has denied them the advan- 

 tage of an academical education in the national seminaries of learning. 



'' But notwithstanding the necessity of introducing very copiously speculations 

 of a more general nature, we must not lose sight of the original objects of the 

 lloyal Institution ; and we must therefore direct our attention more particularly 

 to the theory of practical mechanics and of manufactures. In these depart- 

 ments we shall find some deficiencies which may, without much difficulty, be 

 supplied from scientific principles; and by an ample collection and display of 

 models, illustrative of machines and of inventions of all kinds, we may proceed 

 in the most direct manner to contribute to the dissemination of that kind of 

 knowledge which is more particularly our object. So that we must be more 

 practical than academies of science, and more theoretical than societies for the 

 improvement of arts ; while we endeavor at the same time to give stability to 

 our proceedings by an annual recurrence to the elementary knowledge which is 

 subservient to both classes of institutions, and, as far as we are able, to apidy 

 to practice the newest lights which may, from time to time, be thrown on par- 

 ticular branches of mechanical science. It is thus that we may most elFectually 

 perform what the sophists of antiquity but verbally professed, to bring down 

 philosophy from the heavens, and make her an inhabitant of the earth. 



