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at the mist with which sulphur and phlogiston so long darkened 

 chemistry ! Look at Boreel explaining vital actions by mechanical 

 principles, or Cumberland demonstrating ethics by the sixth book 

 of Euclid. Look at one man referring everything to electricity, 

 another to magnetism ; one declaring man to be a mere association 

 of infusoria, another an assemblage of voltaic currents ; this anti- 

 quarian correcting the history of Herodotus from the poem of 

 Firdusi, that discovering that the Hydra of Hercules was a native of 

 Killarney ! But you will say this is madness : no, it is only the 

 end of a chain of aberrations, whose first link is the almost imper- 

 ceptible predominance of some idea or system ; and had these 

 dreamers been dragged from their dens, had they been compelled 

 to look at their idols in the broad daylight of wider and more va- 

 ried knowledge, to scan them under the rough but just criticism of 

 the votaries of other shrines, their delusions would have vanished. 

 But yet worse remains : there is the far greater danger, that where a 

 number of individuals are congregated with faculties intensely 

 bent on one common object, the legitimate spirit of emulation may 

 degenerate into envy and hatred, or self-esteem be exalted till it blots 

 out all memory of our duty to man and God. It is known to most 

 of us, how, towards the close of the last century, the naturalists of 

 the Eoyal Society trampled on its physicists and mathematicians, 

 and not long since (fas sit audita loqui) the ascendency of the lat- 

 ter became in its turn a cause of irritation and jealousy. The death 

 of Lavoisier still throws a painful shadow over the memory of 

 Fourcroy. Halley rejected Revelation, because he would not be 

 satisfied with any evidence which had not the rigour of geometric 

 proof; and a greater than Halley has argued from the theory of 

 probabilities against Christianity and for mesmerism. 



But even waving the consideration of its injurious influences on 

 the mind, the advantage to be derived from the isolation of scien- 

 tific pursuits is more apparent than real. In fact it is impracticable 

 to any great extent; for there is no branch of science which does 

 not inosculate with many others. Take, for example, the geologists, 

 who were the first to act on this system of separation. None are 

 more ready than they to press into their service the geometry of 

 Hopkins, or the earthquake-dynamics of Mallet; and the deepest 



