547 
1 85o.] Report on Scientific Societies. 
Expressing to you my obligations for agreeing to aCt as 
the medium between the Royal Commission and myself, so 
far as these communications are concerned, 
I remain, my dear sir, 
Yours very sincerely, 
C. K. Akin. 
G. G. Stokes, Esq., Sec. R.S., of the Royal Commission 
on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science, 
London. 
PS.— -So far from being guilty of transgressing in my 
letters the scope of the Royal Commissioners’ deliberations, 
I think that, on the contrary, I should myself notice the 
faCt of having purposely confined myself to a consideration 
of one-half the questions only concerning which they are to 
make inquiry. Excepting a passing remark on the stunting 
effect of competitive examinations on invention, and another 
on the unphilosophic style of many scientific works designed 
for popular instruction, my observations had exclusive bear- 
ing on the advancement of science ; and I will here add but 
one other remark having reference, like the above quoted, 
to scientific instruction. 
Owing, in part at least, to the really wonderful faCts and 
instruments modern science has detected or invented, a 
tendency is spreading to make science altogether, if I may 
use the word, sensational . Experiment, which, in the words 
of Dr. Young — that should be written up in conspicuous 
letters of gold in every leCture-room, — has its uses “in 
assisting the imagination to comprehend, and the memory 
to retain, what in a more abstracted form might fail to 
excite sufficient attention,” instead of being employed as a 
means of instruction becomes the objeCt of attraction. In 
superaddition to the drawback already entailed by our con- 
sitution — in consequence of which the senses perceive only 
projections of things, and the mind judges of these, to use 
the simile of Plato, as a man confined in a cave, into which 
passing objects threw their shadows, could judge of what is 
passing in the outer world — modern modes of scientific ex- 
position have introduced for the representation of phenomena 
appearances not very superior to drawings in the aid they 
afford to the understanding, but of a ghostly charaCtei, and 
apt to make philosophy resemble in faCt, as it anciently was 
likened in name, to magic. The desire to produce excitement 
leads also to worse deeds — such as the furbishing up of well- 
known faCts, so as to give them the appearance of startling 
