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at the mist with which sulphur and phlogiston so long darkened 
chemistry! Look at Boreel explaining vital actions by mechanical 
principles, or Cumberland demonstrating ethics by the sixth book 
of Euclid. Look at one man referring everything to electricity, 
another to magnetism; one declaring man to be a mere association 
of infusoria, another an assemblage of voltaic currents; this anti- 
quarian correcting the history of Herodotus from the poem of 
Firdisi, that discovering that the Hydra of Hercules was a native of 
Killarney! But you will say this is madness : no, it is only the 
end of a chain of aberrations, whose first link is the almost imper- 
ceptible predominance of some idea or system; and had these 
dreamers been dragged from their dens, had they been compelled 
to look at their idols in the broad daylight of wider and more va- 
ried knowledge, to scan them under the rough but just criticism of 
the votaries of other shrines, their delusions would have vanished. 
But yet worse remains : there is the far greater danger, that wherea 
number of individuals are congregated with faculties intensely 
bent on one common object, the legitimate spirit of emulation may 
degenerate into envy and hatred, or self-esteem be exalted till it blots 
out all memory of our duty to man and God. It is known to most 
of us, how, towards the close of the last century, the naturalists of 
the Royal Society trampled on its physicists and mathematicians, 
and not long since (fas sit audita loqui) the ascendency of the lat- 
ter became in its turn a cause of irritation and jealousy. The death 
of Lavoisier still throws a painful shadow over the memory of 
Fourcroy. Halley rejected Revelation, because he would not be 
satisfied with any evidence which had not the rigour of geometric 
proof; and a greater than Halley has argued from the theory of 
probabilities against Christianity and for mesmerism. 
But even waving the consideration of its injurious influences on 
the mind, the advantage to be derived from the isolation of scien- 
tific pursuits is more apparent than real. In fact it is impracticable 
to any great extent; for there is no branch of science which does 
not inosculate with many others. Take, for example, the geologists, 
who were the first to act on this system of separation. None are 
more ready than they to press into their service the geometry of 
Hopkins, or the earthquake-dynamics of Mallet; and the deepest 
as 
