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Directing our attention, therefore, first to science, or the study 

 of the True, — 



Inter sylvas Academi quaerere verum, — 

 we find that, even when thus narrowed, the field to be examined is 

 still so wide as to make necessary a minuter distinction ; whether 

 we would inquire, however briefly, what has been already done by 

 this Academy, or what may fitly be desired and hopefully proposed 

 to be done. Were we to rush into this inquiry without any pre- 

 vious survey of its limits, and, as were natural, allowed ourselves 

 to begin by considering the actual and possible relation of our 

 studies to the primal science, or First Philosophy, the Science of 

 the Mind itself; we might easily be drawn, by the consideration of 

 this one topic, into a discussion, interesting indeed, and (it might 

 be) not uninstructive, but of such vast extent as to leave no room 

 for other topics, which ought even less to be omitted, because they 

 have hitherto come, and are likely to come hereafter, more often than 

 it before our notice, in actual contributions to our Transactions. 

 Indeed I think it prudent at this moment to resist altogether the 

 temptation of expatiating on this attractive theme, of Philosophy, 

 eminently so called ; and to content myself with remarking, that 

 as metaphysical investigation has more than once already found 

 place among the scientific labours of this Academy, so ought it to 

 take rank among them still, and to reappear in that character, from 

 time to time, in our pages. 



Confining ourselves, therefore, at present [to Science, in the 

 usual acceptation of the term, and inquiring what are its chief di- 

 visions, in relation mainly to the connected distribution or classifi- 

 cation of scientific essays in our Transactions, we soon perceive that 

 three such parts of science may conveniently be distinguished from 

 each other, and marked out for separate consideration ; namely those 

 three, which, with some latitude of language, are not uncommonly 

 spoken of as Mathematics, Physics, and Physiology. The first, or 

 mathematical part, being understood to include not only the pure 

 but the mixed mathematics ; not only the results of our original 

 intuitions of time and space, but also the results of the combination 

 of those intuitions with the not less original notion of cause, and 

 with the observed laws of nature, so far and no farther than that 



