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soon to be employed in completing the conquest to which 

 he had pointed the way. In sustaining therefore men of 

 science, when their labors may seem profitless to the vul- 

 gar, learned societies perform an office for which theie 

 seems no other appointed agent. 



There are also other auxiliary functions performed by 

 learned societies, which it is important to notice; and 

 first, it is on the records of these transactions that we 

 must chiefly depend for an accurate history of the pro- 

 gress of science. The history of science considered ab- 

 stractly is of more value, than we would at first suppose. 

 Nor can perfection be attained in any one department of 

 knowledge, without a proper comprehension of the pro- 

 gress which has brought it to the state in which we find 

 it now. I do not believe, for instance, that a man could 

 be a good watchmaker, who should merely know how to 

 construct the newest pendulum or last invented scape- 

 ment. The art in his hands would be apt to be station- 

 ary and unimproveable. To be accomplished in his bu- 

 siness he should have traced the successive improvements 

 from the time of Huyghens upwards; understanding well 

 the primitive arrangement and its defects, and how they 

 have gradually disappeared by the application of human 

 labor and ingenuity. Without knowing this he would be 

 apt to go backward instead of forward, superinducing as 

 improvements combinations which had been tried and dis- 

 carded before. In like manner, he might scarce be a 

 good astronomer, who should know merely the state of 

 the science now, even though he had sounded the depths 

 and mastered the transcendencies of Delambre and La 

 Place. Indeed, he would not be very apt to attain such 

 excellence, without having followed the history of astro- 

 nomy from its origin. The announcement of the true 

 theory by Copernicus; the proof of the first instance by 

 Galileo; the patient labor of Tycho; the sagacious cer- 

 tainty of Kepler; the skill of Huyghens and Cassim, 

 and the far reaching invention of Newton, all succeeded 

 each other in building up the science as it is now, and it 



