sol 
ADDRESS, XXXII 
or conquerors. A description of them would fill volumes,—a record of 
their proceedings would be the history of scientific progress for the last two 
centuries :—I might say of science itself, for, in fact, they began with Newton, 
and he stands like the sun in Heaven; all is luminous after he has risen, 
all before darkness or twilight. Yet, while rendering to them the praise 
which their. services have so well deserved, we must not forget that as they 
were called into existence to meet a state of things which has passed away, 
so the altered condition of the human mind requires from them now a very 
different class of function from those which they discharged at first ; and that 
circumstances may occur in which they may retard instead of advancing the 
progress of knowledge. That which I referred to as an original element of 
their power is of this number,—their restricted and local character: their 
very nature requires that they be placed in large towns or cities, and they 
cannot multiply their members beyond narrow limits. This was not injurious 
as long as a single room in a tavern was sufficient to hold all the philosophers 
of the metropolis, or the means of experiment and instructicn were scarcely 
accessible out of its precincts. It is far otherwise now,—when we count 
more thousands, and those, too, of higher standard in the ranks of science, 
than units could be reckoned at the beginning of Jast century, and when every 
day adds to their number. No possible extension of the great societies can 
meet this, even were they disposed to make it,—which I believe they are 
not. On the contrary, there is among them a tendency to limit their ad- 
missions to men of high fame and proved attainments, and thus, in some 
degree, form an Aristocracy of Science. What, then, is to become of the 
rest ?—-are they to form provincial societies similarly organized? This, it 
seems to me, is but a retrograde step; a violation of the great principle to 
which we owe our advance,—a breaking up into fragments of the energy 
which it should be the aim of all our efforts to associate into one mighty unity ; 
and however valuable such societies are as auxiliaries, unless it be found pos- 
sible to link them, by some principle of federation, unto our great body, with- 
out interfering with their self-government and independence, I feel that much 
of the good which they are capable of' effecting must be lost. Secondly, the 
increasing vastness of the field which we have to cultivate surpasses the 
_ powers of any single body of labourers. Look, for instance, at the most 
illustrious of all, the Royal Society. At first, as we see from its Z7’ransac- 
_ tions, it was a mere collector of detached facts and observations, and for 
them took even a wider range than is attempted by all our Sections; it 
‘eollected too, with but little discrimination :—in that dawning of information it 
was not always possible to distinguish a pebble from a pearl. It soon, how- 
ever, became fastidious ; for it reached the point when it became more im- 
1849. d 
