ON THE HISTORY OF TEItltfeSf RIAL PHYSICS. 755 



although his mode of calculation appears to be by no means unexcep- 

 tionable, as it does not include the consideration of the effects of repul- 

 sion. Had my paper been so fortunate as to attract Mr. Laplace's attention 

 before his memoir was presented to the Institute, he would perhaps have 

 extended the results of my theory with the same success, which has uni- 

 formly distinguished his labours in every other department of natural philo- 

 sophy. 



When we reflect on the state of the sciences in general, at the beginning 

 cf the seventeenth century, and compare it with the progress which has been 

 since made in all of them, we shall be convinced that the; last two hundred 

 years have done much more for the promotion of knowledge, than the two 

 thousand that preceded them : and we shall be still more encouraged by the 

 consideration, that perhaps the greater part of these acquisitions has been 

 made within fifty or sixty years only.. We have therefore the satisfaction of 

 viewing the knowledge of nature not only in a state of advancement, but 

 even advancing with increasing rapidity; and the universal diffusion, of a 

 taste for science appears to promise, that, as the number of its cultivators in- 

 creases, new facts will be continually discovered, and those,which are already 

 known, will be better uliderstood,^and more beneficially applied. The Royal In- 

 stitution, with other societies of a similar nature, will have tlie merit of assist- 

 ing in the dissemination of knowledge, and in the cultivation of a taste for 

 its pursuit ; and the advantages arising from the general introduction of 

 philosophical studies, and from the adoption of the practical improvements 

 depending on them, will amply repay the labours of those-, who have been ac- 

 tive in the establishment and support of associations so truly laudable. 



