4 LECTURE I. 



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

 our researches is, to enable ourselves to distinguish and to adopt the hun- 

 dredth. But while we prune the luxuriant shoots of youthful invention, 

 we must remember 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 

 furnished, 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 perhaps deserve admission, which will not require so particular an 

 explanation. To those who have profited by the lectures, or who are 

 already too far advanced to stand in need of them, our rooms for reading 

 and for literary conversation may be a source of mutual instruction. Our 

 library in time must 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 occasionally be given in the lectures on those sciences. 

 Our journals, free from commercial shackles, will present the public, 

 from time to time, with concise accounts of the most interesting novelties 

 in science and in the useful arts ; and they will furnish a perpetual incite- 

 ment to their editors to appropriate, as much as possible, to their own 

 improvement, whatever is valuable in the publications of their cotempo- 

 raries. When all the advantages which may reasonably be expected from 

 this institution shall be fully understood and impartially considered, it is 

 to be hoped that few persons of liberal minds will be indifferent to its 

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



To that regulation, which forbids the introduction of any discussions 

 connected with the learned professions, I shall always most willingly submit, 

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

 jof a man's life to qualify him to be of use to mankind in any of them ; and 

 fl nothing can be more pernicious to individuals or to society, than the 

 jj attempting to proceed practically upon an imperfect conception of a few 

 first principles only. In physic, the wisest can do but little, and the igno- 

 rant can only do worse than nothing : and anxiously as we are disposed 

 to seek whatever relief the learned and experienced may be able to afford 

 us, so cautiously ought we to avoid the mischievous interference of the 

 half-studied empiric : in politics and in religion, we need but to look back 

 on the history of kingdoms and republics, in order to be aware of the 

 mischiefs which ensue, when " fools rush in where angels fear to tread." 



Deeply impressed with the importance of mathematical investigations, 

 both for the advancement of science and for the improvement of the mind, 1 

 thought it in the first place an indispensable duty to present the Royal Insti- 

 tution, in my Syllabus, with a connected system of natural philosophy, 

 on a plan seldom, if ever, before executed in the most copious treatises, 

 v ^Proceeding from the simplest axioms of abstract mathematics, the Syllabus 

 contains a strict demonstration of every proposition which I have found it 

 -^> ! necessary to employ throughout the whole extent of natural philosophy. 



