112 



Our Retrospect. 



tion, and themselves given that meed of honor to which they feel so 

 justly entitled. 



These, therefore, are a few of the principal essentials for the earlier 

 formation of societies like our own : the supply of members looking 

 to something beyond the ordinary ambitions of the day, and disposed 

 to give their time and energies for an unappreciated cause, perfect 

 civil and religious liberty, so that their investigations may not be 

 thwarted or crushed out, and a proper countenance from the com- 

 munity, so that these investigations, even if allowed by authority? 

 may not be lost for lack of encouragement and co-operation. And as 

 it could scarcely be expected that at an early period there should be 

 any self-constituted body of men strong enough successfully to sur- 

 mount all obstacles, it must be conceded, I think, that such associa- 

 tions could not have existed in necessary freedom and fellowship un- 

 til within the last two or three centuries, perhaps not with perfect 

 completeness until the beginning of this century; and then only as the 

 resnlt of an evolution in political and ecclesiastical authority, in educa- 

 tional privilege and in social condition even more gradual in its many 

 thousand minute changes than the evolution through scarcely percepti- 

 ble processes that at last led to the possibility of a London Times. 



It would be a pleasant feature in the world's history, if it had always 

 been otherwise. It would become a very interesting task to examine 

 the transactions of some society that had existed in the fullness of 

 freedom and co-operation for many centuries, publishing its researches 

 every year, until the aggregate of its labors amounted to many hun- 

 dred volumes. It would be a captivating study to run through the 

 series of its productions from the very beginning, noting how each 

 volume marked a slight progression in the world of thought and dis- 

 covery, and how, from the first, light had been thrown upon olden su- 

 perstitions and stern logic applied to foolish fallacies; so that, at the 

 end, scientific truths would be found to have banished medieval fan- 

 cies, and the bringing together of volumes far apart in their sequence, 

 however little each might differ from its predecessor, would show a 

 marked progress in any interval of a few score years. That this can- 

 not be done, however, is somewhat to the benefit and credit of the 

 Albany Institute. It enables it to stand co-eval and co-equal with other 

 societies of its kind. First as the Society for the Promotion of Agricul- 

 ture, Arts and Manufacture, then as the Society for the Promotion of 

 Useful Arts, and after that as the Albany Lyceum of Natural History, 

 the whole subsequently coalescing into the Albany Institute, prac- 

 tically the same association throughout, with merely a change of name 

 as occasion dictated the need of it, the members of one society merg- 



