Page:An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.djvu/73

 to promote natural knowlege; but to treasure up every unsuccessful enquiry into nature, or to communicate every experiment without conclusion, is not to promote science, but confuse it; not to lift learning from obscurity, but with additional weight to oppress it. Had the members of these societies enlarged their plans, and taken in art as well as science, one part of knowlege would have repressed any faulty luxuriance in the other, and all would have mutually assisted each others promotion.

to this, the society which, with a contempt of all collateral assistance, admits of members skilled in one science only, whatever their diligence, or labour may be, will lose much time in the discovery of such truths as are well known already to the