104 



ties, owes its establishment ; and though the members who com- 

 pose it are not entirely without hope that their efforts may become 

 extensively useful, yet the original intent of the institution must 

 be considered as confining their views, for the present, more imme- 

 diately to Ireland. If their endeavours shall but serve to excite in 

 their countrymen some sense of the dignity of mental exertion, if 

 their exhortation and example shall be so far successful as to be- 

 come the means of turning vacant thoughts to science and to utility, 

 their labours are abundantly recompensed." 



You see they designed the Society which they were organizing 

 to be an instrument of moral as well as intellectual cultivation ; 

 and to this we owe our peculiar constitution, admirably suited to 

 such a purpose, but having no exact counterpart in any scientific 

 body with which I am acquainted. It stands almost alone in the 

 extent of its objects. Others are limited in general to a single de- 

 partment of inquiry, or even a small section of one: we have three, 

 connected by no closer union than what exists between demonstra- 

 tion, conjecture, and fancy. It might be thought, that they could 

 scarcely be brought into any harmonious co-operation, and that 

 there could be but little sympathy between those who cultivate 

 them. It might be expected, that the archaeologist could not take 

 any very strong interest in scalars and vectors, or the transcendental 

 geometrician in the half-obliterated legend of a battered coin, and 

 that they would only agree in their contempt of Punic dialogue or 

 Assyrian orthography. Our plan is also liable to these objec- 

 tions, that polychrest machines seldom work well ; that an object 

 is best attained by undivided effort ; and that the energy which, 

 when confined in a single channel would be irresistible, is lost if 

 you divide it into many streams. This opinion has latterly prevailed 

 so far, as to induce philosophers, in many instances, to split into 

 secondary societies those previously existing : it, however, seems to 

 me to grow from a narrow and imperfect view of the subject. It is 

 true that, in some respects, though not in all, the cultivation of 

 particular branches of science may be benefited by this system of 

 isolation ; but there is ample ground for doubting whether it be 

 equally beneficial to the cultivators. The mind that is restricted 

 to some engrossing pursuit, and shut out from a wide range of 



