104 
ties, owes its establishment; and though the members who com- 
pose it are not entirely without hope that their efforts may become 
extensively useful, yet the original intent of the institution must 
be considered as confining their views, for the present, more imme- 
diately to Ireland. If their endeavours shall but serve to excite in 
their countrymen some sense of the dignity of mental exertion, if 
their exhortation and example shall be so far successful as to be- 
come the means of turning vacant thoughts to science and to utility, 
their labours are abundantly recompensed.” 
You see they designed the Society which they were organizing 
to be an instrument of moral as well as intellectual cultivation ; 
and to this we owe our peculiar constitution, admirably suited to 
such a purpose, but having no exact counterpart in any scientific 
body with which I am acquainted. It stands almost alone in the 
extent of its objects. Others are limited in general to a single de- 
partment of inquiry, or even a small section of one: we have three, 
connected by no closer union than what exists between demonstra- 
tion, conjecture, and fancy. It might be thought, that they could 
scarcely be brought into any harmonious co-operation, and that 
there could be but little sympathy between those who cultivate 
them. It might be expected, that the archeologist could not take 
any very strong interest in scalars and vectors, or the transcendental 
geometrician in the half-obliterated legend of a battered coin, and 
that they would only agree in their contempt of Punic dialogue or 
Assyrian orthography. Our plan is also liable to these objec- 
tions, that polychrest machines seldom work well; that an object 
is best attained by undivided effort; and that the energy which, 
when confined in a single channel would be irresistible, is lost if 
you divide it into many streams. This opinion has latterly prevailed 
so far, as to induce philosophers, in many instances, to split into 
secondary societies those previously existing: it, however, seems to 
me to grow from a narrow and imperfect view of the subject. It is 
true that, in some respects, though not in all, the cultivation of 
particular branches of science may be benefited by this system of 
isolation; but there is ample ground for doubting whether it be 
equally beneficial to the cultivators. The mind that is restricted 
to some engrossing pursuit, and shut out from a wide range of 
