294 APPENDIX. [No. xxi. 



Nature and Nature's laws forms an inexhaustible source of pleasure ; and 

 the longest life wiU not suffice to exhaust a fountain which can never be 

 dried up. 



I regret to state that I have heard persons declare, that they have 

 been present at nearly every lecture delivered by the eminent men who 

 have honoured this institution by their discourses during a period of many 

 years, without deriving any advantage from them. Let such a fearful 

 statement weigh heavily on your minds ; for if you come to our lectures 

 as those persons have done, without paying a proper attention to the 

 subjects explained, you will, like them, derive no benefit. Others who have 

 attended to the lectures, have acknowledged that they owe their present 

 position and power to a careful attention to the great truths which have 

 been taught within these waUs. It is, therefore, better for you to hear 

 a few lectures attentively, than hundreds with that carelessness and inatten- 

 tion which allow no permanent effect to be produced upon the mind. 



If we carefully consider the evils arising from an absence of know- 

 ledge, we shall soon perceive what lamentable consequences must be the 

 result. Two or three years ago, many persons were poisoned by bella- 

 donna-berries sold about the streets ; and I remember a man to have been 

 bitten by a viper as he carried the creature about, supposing it to have 

 been only a harmless snake. This year we read that in Italy, during the 

 visitation of the dreadf td scourge which passed over the earth, the people 

 believed that the doctors were the cause of -it, and drove them from the 

 city when they most needed their aid. At another place they supposed 

 the doctors had poisoned the water, and compelled them to drink to prove 

 their innocence. Curiously enough also, five hundred years ago, by a 

 similar lamentable ignorance, a fatal epidemic of the period, called the 

 black death, was ascribed to poison cast into the wells by the Jews ; and 

 hundreds of poor wretches were cruelly tormented and barbarously put to 

 death, for a malady which was entirely owing to a visitation of God. 



Do not think to put off the time for attention to surrounding objects 

 to " a more convenient season," and wait tUl you are older before you 

 begin to observe. If you do so, you are not only losing precious time, 

 which never can return, but your faculties of appreciation wiU rather 

 . diminish than increase. Although the faculties of observation last as long 

 as the senses last, yet in advancing years new objects do not make such 

 vivid impressions as they do in early Ufe. The faculty of deriving simple 

 ideas from Nature, I have called from reasons which I need not explain, 

 the Syndbamic faculty: a faculty which increases from chUdhood to 

 adolescence, and decreases from puberty to old age. It is your time now 

 . to observe, and if you neglect it deficiency of information and inferiority 

 to those around you must inevitably be your lot. 



It is, however, not only necessary to obtain facts, but the facts must 

 by thought and reflection be brought before the mind, and so combined 

 and arranged together, that they may constitute principles. In this way 

 we derive our ideas of force and power, and obtain a notion of heat, light, 

 and electricity, and all the vai-ious qualities and properties of matter. 



Thus, if I throw a piece of potassium into water, it combines with the 

 oxygen, one element of the water, and forms potash ; or I may remove one 

 element by a piece of zinc, or a piece of iron. When we find from a vast 

 number of facts that we can join simple bodies together, separate com- 



