456 ADDRESS DELIVERED AT A MEETING 



this manner the Boyal Society of London, which included origi- 

 nally, and still includes, representatives from every department of 

 philosophy, has seen Society after Society spring up, manned by 

 its own members, and claiming to perform, in a more complete 

 and effective manner, the separated portions of its work. 



Such a state of things is the natural result of increased acti- 

 vity in any department, and of the consequent demand which 

 it makes for a larger portion of time, and the other appliances of 

 labour, than can be devoted to it in a body of mixed constitution, 

 and more comprehensive plan. Nor can it be doubted that such 

 a multiplication of the instruments, by which intellectual force is 

 concentrated and applied, is attended with the many advantages 

 which arise from the division of labour, nor that it has actually 

 tended, and in a very important degree, to push forward and to 

 extend the boundary which divides the known from the unknown. 



But perhaps these advantages, great as they are, have not been 

 wholly unbalanced. Have we not reason to apprehend that philo- 

 sophy has suffered, while the portions of her mighty empire have 

 asserted their independence, and erected themselves into separate 

 kingdoms ? -So far as we insulate any portion of Truth from the 

 rest, by an exclusive devotion to its pursuit and there can be no 

 doubt that such exclusiveness tends to insulation, so far we muti- 

 late the fair proportions of Truth itself, and injure and impair the 

 philosophic spirit whose vital power should animate and pervade 

 the whole. And the injury, great as it is, does not end here. 

 There is an evil partaking of a moral nature obviously springing 

 from this exclusiveness, and which, unhappily, we see too often 

 realized, unless where some counteracting power is brought in to 

 check it. I mean its effect in narrowing our views, in rendering 

 us bigots in philosophy, and in causing us to undervalue that 

 which we do not understand. 



Now, the mixed constitution of our Society has a manifest ten- 

 dency to overcome, or, at least, to mitigate, these evils. I do not 

 mean to say that these evils, and these means of combating them, 

 were distinctly perceived by the first founders of this Body. It is 

 an humbling lesson, that human institutions, in which we have 

 learned to find wisdom, have often had their origin in circum- 

 stances, and their, growth amid the adjustments of conflicting in- 

 terests. The plan of this Academy took its rise, I believe, in the 

 union of two small Societies, calling themselves the Pakeosophers 



