Page:Reflections on the decline of science in England - Babbage - 1830.pdf/147



An important distinction exists between scientific communications, which seems to have escaped the notice of the Councils of the Royal Society. They may contain discoveries of new principles,—of laws of nature hitherto unobserved; or they may consist of a register of observations of known phenomena, made under new circumstances, or in new and peculiar situations on the face of our planet. Both these species of additions to our knowledge are important; but their value and their rarity are very different in degree. To make and to repeat observations, even with those trifling alterations, which it is the fashion in our country (in the present day) to dignify with the name of discoveries, requires merely inflexible candour in recording precisely the facts which nature has presented, and a power of fixing the attention on the instruments employed, or phenomena examined,—a talent, which can be much improved by proper instruction, and which is possessed by most persons of tolerable abilities