INTRODUCTION. 5 



sense would suggest to an impartial observer. We may venture to affirm that 

 out of every hundred of fancied improvements in arts or in machines, ninety 

 at least, if not ninety nine, are either old or useless ; the object of our re- 

 gearches is, to enable ourselves to distinguish and to adopt the hundredth. 

 But while we prune the luxuriant shoots of youthful invention, we must re- 

 member to perform our task with leniency, and to show that we wish only 

 to give additional vigour to the healthful branches, and not to extirpate the 

 parent plant. 



The Repository of the Royal Institution, as soon as it can be properly fur- 

 nished, will be considered as a supplementary room for apparatus, in which 

 the most interesting models, exhibited and described in the lectures, will be 

 placed for more frequent inspection, and where a few other articles may per- 

 haps deserve admission, which will not require so particular an explanation. 

 To those who have profited by the lectures, or who are already too far ad- 

 vanced to stand in need of them, our rooms for reading and for literary con- 

 versation may be a source of mutual instruction. Our Library in time nuist 

 contain all those works of importance which are too expensive for the private 

 collections of the generality of individuals; which are necessary to complete 

 the knowledge of particular sciences, and to which references will occasion- 

 ally be given in the lectures on those sciences. Our Journals, free from com- 

 mercial shackles, will present the public, from time to time, with concise ac- 

 counts of the most interesting novelties in science and in the useful arts ; and 

 they will furnish a perpetual incitement to their editors to appropriate, as muck 

 as possible, to their own improvement, whatever is valuable in the jxiblications 

 of their cotemporaries. When all the advantages, which may reasonably be 

 expected from this Institution, shall be fully understood and impartially con- 

 sidered, it is to be hoped that few persons of liberal minds will be indifi'ercnt 

 to its success, or unwilling to contribute to it and to participate in it. 



To that regulation, which forbids the intFoduction of any discussions con- 

 nected with the learned professions, I shall always most willingly submit, and 

 most punctually attend. It requires the study of a considerable portion of a 

 man's life to qualify hirh to be of use to mankind in any of them ; and nothing- 

 can be more pernicious to individuals or to society, tlian the attempting to 

 proceed practically upon an imperfect conception of a few iirst principles only. 



