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patrons of science, and its peaceful honors were held 

 more ennobling than those gained either in the forum or 

 the field. 



It is a fact deserving notice, that all these associations 

 originated in the immediate neighborhood of universities 

 which were then old, and some of which still survive, 

 though like the heavy gothic structures in which they 

 were located, they now serve only to shew that learning 

 for a long time required to be immured and protected. 

 The meetings at Oxford, of which the peaceful Richard 

 Cromwell was one of the first members, would have been 

 proscribed under the monarchy: and it was urged at Pa- 

 ris, as a main reason for the Academy to accept its first 

 constitution, that they would be otherwise obnoxious to 

 the penalties enacted against unauthorized assemblies, 

 and might under a less wise government be punished and 

 suppressed. We must also remark that the main purpose 

 of these new establishments was the encouragement of 

 science and the new philosophy. There had undoubted- 

 ly existed private societies of an older date, both in the 

 universities and among the religious orders, tending to 

 the same end— and the Benedictines and the Jesuits we 

 know were zealous cultivators of science. But these 

 influences were confined and characterized by the more 

 distinct duties of their profession, and were besides lia- 

 ble to a vice of which it is important to be aware. The 

 mere association of learned men, though it give unity of 

 action, correct any habit of thinking peculiar to the in- 

 dividual and increase the mass of knowledge, will yet in 

 time produce an evil much more incurable and danger- 

 ous to the object of true philosophy, the spirit of system, 

 by which men come to appropriate principles as they do 

 chattels for the sole reason that they have been to them 

 the object of labor and care, and to defend and propo- 

 gate them sometimes to the extent of persecution, with- 

 out considering that new observation and new methods 

 may have already proven them to be false. This is the 

 evil which renders reformation and reorganization neces- 



