120 Observations relating to the Operations undertaken 
ceived’and so perseeuted, would, after so short an interval, be 
deemed of such importance and so generally admired, as to in- 
duce the governments of Europe to undertake great operations 
and distant voyages for the sole purpose of explaining them, and 
of verifying all their relations ; and that, by the effect of an un- 
expected propagation of knowledge, the results of these labours 
should be presented to the attention of the public in — 
assemblies composed of the most eminent classes of society! 
Yet such is the great change which has been effected in the fate 
of the sciences since that period. 
When Galileo and Bacon appeared, they found the sciences 
only on the brink of being—for it would be inaccurate to give 
the name of science to that mass of useless hypothetical specu- 
lation of which all natural philosophy previously consisted. The 
aim of the ancients was rather to divine than to investigate na- 
tural causes. The art of examining nature in order to con- 
Strain her to reveal her secrets was unknown ;—it remained for 
Galileo and Bacon to make this discovery. They evinced that 
the human mind is too feeble, and too evanescent in its efforts, 
to advance by its own strength through the labyrinth of natural 
facts ; that it is necessary at every new step of ‘its progress to 
rest upon and to classify those phenomena which approximate 
to one another ; and that in the multiphed opportunities which 
hature offers for inquiry, experiments industriously imagined are 
requisite to conduct to a course of new phenomena which shall 
neither entangle nor mislead. Lion 
Such has been the felicity of this mode of investigation, that 
in less than two centuries, discoveries without number, and cer- 
tain and durable, have illustrated every department of seience;— 
the arts have rapidly participated in their beneficial effects; m- 
dustry has been enriched with many wonderful applications, and 
a sum of knowledge has been accumulated a thousand times 
greater than that of which antiquity could ever boast. As the 
Sciences, however, have thus been enlarged, they have grown be- 
yond the reach of any single individual to attain. So large a 
sphere could no longer be embraced but by a numerous literary 
body, which in its aggregate capacity similar to one mind should 
unite all conceptions, views and thoughts; and which, inter- 
rupted neither by human infirmities nor the decline of reason, or 
age, but always young and always vigorous, should incessantly 
scrutinize the peculiar properties of natural objects, discover the 
powers concealed in them, and at last present them to society 
prepared and ready.for appljcation. In a central body such as 
this, where opinions have the freest operation, no authority can 
prevail, if it be not that of reason and of nature. The voice 
even of a Plato himself could no longer gain attention in such 
an 
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