216 Yorkshire Philosophical Society 



exertions of many persons whom he had the pleasure of seeing 

 assembled in that room ; and of none more than of those friends 

 whose kindness had so much amplified the services which he had 

 rendered to the Institution. For himself, "he had only," in the 

 words of Bacon, " taken upon him to ring a bell to awaken better 

 spirits than his own." Whatever exertions he had made for the esta- 

 blishment of the Society, were founded upon fixed principles; upon 

 the opinion, that such societies were eminently serviceable to the 

 advancement of knowledge; and upon the conviction, that the ad- 

 vancement of knowledge is of the most real and practical importance 

 to the best interests of mankind. He considered tlie promotion of 

 science as the highest kind of charity, because science is the parent of 

 all those arts which minister to the sup])ly of human wants ; and if a 

 man has any wish to do good, how couhl he do it so extensively as by 

 promoting the sciences on which those arts depend } Every one, he 

 said, saw the utility of supporting a hospital, and it was surprising to 

 him that every one should not also see the utility of supporting those 

 sciences from which hospitals derived the power of doing good. The 

 most powerful remedies for the alleviation of human suffering were 

 the inventions of experimental philosophy, — chemistry. The great dis- 

 covery of the circulation of the blood, on which so much of the treat- 

 ment of diseases depended, was drawn by the philosophical mind of 

 Harvey, from the analogy of the valves of the veins with the mechan- 

 ism of a hydraulic engine. He considered the promotion of science 

 also as one of the most powerful methods of promoting religion ; and 

 he had formed this opinion, not only from the obvious tendency of the 

 contemplation of nature to fill the mind with religious impressions, 

 but also from historical facts. That there was sometimes such an 

 anomaly as an irreligious philosopher was true ; but any one who 

 examined the history of human opinions accurately, would find, that 

 the times in which there was least science, had been those in which 

 both superstition and atheism flourished most. In proof of this 

 a.ssertion, he cited some remarkable statements of Petrarch in the 

 fourteenth century, and of Mersenner upon the rise of philosophy, in 

 the sixteenth century. 



The President then read a paper On the History and Influence of 

 Literary and Scientific Institutions, tracing them from an early period 

 to the present time, and remarking on their merits and defects. The 

 following were some of his concluding observations: — " I wish the 

 national Society in the metropolis of Great Britain for the important 

 work of the advancement of human knowledge, were such in its esta- 

 blishments and resources as to be worthy of such a country as this; 

 and I wish that all such Societies were founded on the plan of the 

 New Atlantis in respect to one of its most essential principles, a 

 principle which the Royal Society at its first institution was unhappily 

 obliged to relinquish. One of the greatest defects in the state of 

 learning remarked by Bacon was this ; — that the sciences had never 

 possessed a whole and entire man. He thought it ' necessary to their 

 progression, that those who are to generate and propagate them 

 should be placed in such a condition as may content the ablest man 



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