Our Retrospect. 109 



community's consent to call for the production of those ideas, ,aud 

 there must be the legal permission to present them, as long as they 

 are proper and innocent, without danger of tyrannous repression. 

 In fact, what departments in science, education, jurisprudence, inven- 

 tion and industry can be left out of consideration if a copy of the 

 London Times is to be produced ? 



In like manner let us study the difficulties surrounding the growth 

 of associations like our own. It seems very easy from the first, does 

 it not ? Only a dozen or two of quiet gentlemen with scientific or 

 literary affinities, with leisure to cultivate them, and who could 

 entertain the idea — and what idea more easily apprehended? — of 

 meeting occasionally in some comfortable room, and interchanging 

 their views about whatever may be novel or interesting in art or 

 science. And having done so much for their own pleasure, how easy 

 to supply the world at large with the results of their labors, so that 

 all other men may be equally benefited ! Why, this is a thing which 

 should almost come about of itself, without care or forethought. 

 There should certainly have been educational and scientific associa- 

 tions similar to our own many centuries ago. 



And yet, in the very beginning must come the difficulty of supply- 

 ing these few learned and earnest men with the basis of any such as- 

 sociation. Even in our own day of universal instruction, a great deal 

 of sifting down must be exercised in collecting such material. Among 

 the large number of persons now among us who have attained the 

 ordinary education of the period, there may be few who take sufficient 

 interest in it to care about increasing their store of knowledge simply 

 for knowledge's sake. Most all will remain content with what to them 

 is merely necessary for the practical working of life in their bueinesa 

 complications. Of these there will be fewer who are fitted by nature 

 for independent investigation, with any accompanying disposition logi- 

 cally to correct the errors of the past and place their education upon 

 a more expansive as well as trustworthy foundation. And among 

 these, there may be very few indeed who will take sufficient interest 

 in their work to feel stimulated to spread abroad their labors and dis- 

 coveries for the benefit of others. If this is so now, how much more 

 difficult it would have been to gather even a less number of such per- 

 sons in those olden days when the most simple education ot tne 



not considered, and when 



writing 



mainly confined to monasteries and the clerkly departments of royal 

 But' supposing that at last these men should be successfully collected 

 it would be found that they must not only be scholarly inclined, but 



