28 
FIRST REPORT— 1831 . 
performs the part of promoting natural knowledge by any such 
exertions as those which we now propose to revive. As a body, 
it scarcely labours itself, and does not attempt to guide the 
labours of others. 
“ Hence it happens, that when any science becomes popular, 
and those who interest themselves in its advancement perceive 
the necessity of working for it by united exertions, that science 
is detached from the central body; first one fragment falls off, 
and then another; colony after colony dissevers itself from 
the declining empire, and by degrees the commonwealth of 
science is dissolved. The new Societies distinguish themselves 
by their diligence and activity ; the parts of knowledge which 
thus receive more distinct attention, and are propelled by more 
undivided labour, make rapid advances; and each separate 
undertaking justifies itself by the most promising appearances 
and undeniable fruits. 
“ This is a new stage, Gentlemen, in the progress of science ; 
a new state of things, which, whilst it is attended certainly 
with great advantages, has some consequences of doubtful 
aspect to the highest aims of philosophy. As the facts and 
speculations in any department of knowledge are multiplied, 
the study of it has a tendency to engross and confine the views 
of those by whom it is cultivated; and if the system of separate 
Societies shall encourage this insulation, science will be in the 
end retarded by them more than it is at first advanced. The 
chief Interpreters of nature have always been those w ho grasped 
the widest field of inquiry, who have listened w r ith the most 
universal curiosity to all information, and felt an interest in 
every question which the one great system of nature presents. 
Nothing, I think, could be a more disastrous event for the 
sciences, than that one of them should be in any manner dis¬ 
sociated from another; and nothing can conduce more to prevent 
that dissociation, than the bringing into mutual contact men 
who have exercised great and equal powers of mind upon dif¬ 
ferent pursuits ; nothing more fitted to shame men out of that 
unphilosophical contempt which they are too apt to feel for 
each other’s objects; nothing more likely to open to them new 
veins of thought, which may be of the utmost importance to the 
very inquiries on which they are more peculiarly intent. 
“ I remember, at the Meeting of a foreign Society, to have 
heard a memoir read, in which a specific and original difference 
was inferred between tw r o animals (commonly considered of one 
species), not from any difference in the higher and more essential 
parts of their organization, but from a dissimilarity of colour in 
