308 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
with mental facts that lie deep down in human nature as well as 
with favouring external conditions. The same faculties of the 
mind operate in every age, only in varying degrees, and it depends 
on their relative development in the individual or the community 
as to what will be the distinctive form of mental life in any given 
period. In every age of civilization, from the earliest times, the 
Imagination has generated Art ; the Conscience, Morality and 
Religion ; the Acquisitive Affections, Commerce ; and the Intellect, 
Science ; while Literature has been the product of various mental 
powers. From the dawn of thought Mind has regarded itself as 
one, and the external order of things as another ; and, according 
to the measure of its conscious power, it has striven to impress 
itself on its ubiquitous companion, and also to frame for itself an 
ideal transcript of the forms it assumes, and the changes it under- 
goes. Hence it is that artists, saints, merchants, scientific observers, 
in some humble guise, have appeared in every age. The advance 
of civilization means, in other phrase, the development of society, 
and society is formed by the segregation of similars, and con- 
sequently by the separation of aims and interests ; and so it comes 
to pass that, in process of time, the different classes of pursuit, 
originating in the unequal development in individuals of the 
diverse faculties and tendencies of the mind, become more dis- 
tinctly segregated, and attain to prominence in so far as circum- 
stances favour any special mental development rather than another. 
It is well known to students of Biology that in any highly 
organized life there is a co-ordinated development, on a corres- 
ponding scale, of diverse parts so as to secure the equilibrium 
necessary to permanence ; and looking, in the light of this truth, 
upon civilized society as a sort of organised creature maintaining 
itself in being according to definite laws, we see that its highly- 
organised character at any period implies, on an enlarged scale, the 
co-existence of diverse habits and pursuits. We happen to be 
living in a period when Art, Religion, Commerce, Literature, and 
Scionce have each attained an enormous development as compared 
with what obtained a thousand years ago ; and it has occurred to 
me that, as this Institution seeks, among other objects, to promote 
the study and advancement of Science, and has, moreover, in the 
erection of a new Museum, given fresh distinctness to this object, 
it might not be out of place if on this occasion I ventured to call 
your attention to the prevalence of the Modern Scientific Spirit. 
