( 485 ) 

 APPENDIX. 



I. 



Extracts from the 'Discourse of the Objects, Advantages, and 

 Pleasures of Science, prefixed to the Works of the Useful 

 Knowledge Society. 



[The doctrines here delivered are illustrated in the Lives 

 of D'Alembert and Banks.] 



IT may easily be demonstrated, that there is an advantage 

 in learning, both for the usefulness and the pleasure of it. 

 There is something positively agreeable to all men, to all at 

 least whose nature is not most grovelling and base, in gaining 

 knowledge for its own sake. When you see anything for the 

 first time, you at once derive some gratification from the sight 

 being new; your attention is awakened, and you desire to 

 know more about it. If it is a piece of workmanship, as an 

 instrument, a machine of any kind, you wish to know how it 

 is made ; how it works ; and what use it is of. If it is an 

 animal, you desire to know where it conies from; how it lives; 

 what are its dispositions, and, generally, its nature and habits. 

 You feel this desire, too, without at all considering that the 

 machine or the animal may ever be of the least use to your- 

 self practically; for, in all probability, you may never see 

 them again. But you have a curiosity to learn all about 

 them, because they are new and unknown. You accordingly 

 make inquiries ; you feel a gratification in getting answers to 

 your questions, that is, in receiving information, and in 

 knowing more in being better informed than you were 

 before. If you happen again to see the same instrument or 

 animal, you find it agreeable to recollect having seen it for- 

 merly, and to think that you know something about it. If 

 you see another instrument or animal, in some respects like, 

 but differing in other particulars, you find it pleasing to 

 compare them together, and to note in what they agree, and 

 in what they differ. Now, all this kind of gratification is of 

 a pure and disinterested nature, and has no reference to any 

 of the common purposes of life; yet it is a pleasure an 



