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4 
ADDRESS. XXX1 
split their philosophers into sects, their nation into fragments. Elsewhere 
the separation was still wider; the priestly casts of old, the conventional 
clergy and masonic societies of more recent times, could not coalesce with 
the rest of the world in the union which I hold to be essential to the growth 
of science. Therefore, however extensive their knowledge (and they knew 
more than is generally supposed) it never ripened into general principles ; 
it even became corrupt in the dull stagnation of the mystery in which it was 
buried,—an instrument of superstition or imposture, a delusion to its pos- 
sessors themselves. Astronomy became astrology,—chemistry, alchemy— 
natural philosophy, magic. Brewster has shown how the concave mirror 
brought up an apparition when it was needed, and Boutigny has revealed how 
the repulsive energies of heat ministered to the iniquity of the ordeal. But 
this period of isolated labour, under which the intellectual domain of our 
race lay so long fallow, closed at last; and the principle of association re- 
vealed itself, at one of the epochs of that movement which from time to time 
stirs up the region of mind, as those of geology do the earth at the com- 
mencement of some great formation. To borrow from that science an illustra- 
tion,—the reign of reptiles and monsters gave way to higher beings that 
soared in the sky; the dominion of Aristotle and the schoolmen disappeared 
before the age of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Bacon. From the fifteenth 
century downwards we find the philosophers of Europe beginning to be 
worthy of that name, lovers of knowledge. Instead of wrapping up their 
discoveries in secrecy, using them as a means of influence over the ignorant, 
or brooding on them as food for haughty self-love; we find them forming a 
brotherhood of knowledge,—eager to communicate their inventions, applying 
to each other for instruction, and even disputing among themselves the 
honour of priority in successful research, If the Florentine astronomer 
still envelopes in cipher his observations of Venus and Saturn, it is lest a 
rival should anticipate what was necessary to perfect his discovery :—while 
the Monk of Oxford hides in a similar veil his knowledge of gunpowder to 
exalt himself in the opinion of the world, yet keep his secret. The step in 
advance was wide, and the onward progress was rapid. It is not merely 
that each discovery, which is thus freely communicated, becomes an imperish- 
able addition to the treasury of human knowledge, but it is also a source of 
others, more numerous as it is more widely diffused,—like a syngenesious 
flower, whose winged seeds would produce little if confined to the neigh- 
bourhood of their parent, but bear a thousand-fold when scattered over the 
land. He who first finds a physical fact or principle often fails to trace it to 
its full extent: pre-occupied by some particular object of research, led by 
special views, he looks at it with reference to them alone,—and were he 
