2 
Directing our attention, therefore, first to science, or the study 
of the True,— 
Inter sylvas Academi querere verum,— 
we find that, even when thus narrowed, the field to be examined is 
still so wide as to make necessary a minuter distinction ; whether 
we would inquire, however briefly, what has been already done by 
this Academy, or what may fitly be desired and hopefully proposed 
to be done. Were we to rush into this inquiry without any pre- 
vious survey of its limits, and, as were natural, allowed ourselves 
to begin by considering the actual and possible relation of our 
studies to the primal science, or First Philosophy, the Science of 
the Mind itself; we might easily be drawn, by the consideration of 
this one topic, into a discussion, interesting indeed, and (it might 
be) not uninstructive, but of such vast extent as to leave no room 
for other topics, which ought even less to be omitted, because they 
have hitherto come, and are likely to come hereafter, more often than 
it before our notice, in actual contributions to our Transactions. 
Indeed I think it prudent at this moment to resist altogether the 
temptation of expatiating on this attractive theme, of Philosophy, 
eminently so called; and to content myself with remarking, that 
as metaphysical investigation has more than once already found 
place among the scientific labours of this Academy, so ought it to 
take rank among them still, and to reappear in that character, from 
time to time, in our pages. 
Confining ourselves, therefore, at present ‘to Science, in the 
usual acceptation of the term, and inquiring what are its chief di- 
visions, in relation mainly to the connected distribution or classifi- 
cation of scientific essays in our Transactions, we soon perceive that 
three such parts of science may conveniently be distinguished from 
each other, and marked out for separate consideration ; namely those 
three, which, with some latitude of language, are not uncommonly 
spoken of as Mathematics, Physics, and Physiology. The first, or 
mathematical part, being understood to include not only the pure 
but the mixed mathematics; not only the results of our original 
intuitions of time and space, but also the results of the combination 
of those intuitions with the not less original notion of cause, and 
with the observed laws of nature, so far and no farther than that 
