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72 the first place, however, I shall add a few miscellaneous remarks on some important events which occurred in this country during the lifetime of Hobbes, and of which his extraordinary longevity prevented me sooner from taking notice.

Among these events, that which is most immediately connected with our present subject, is the establishment of the Royal Society of London in 1662, which was followed a few years afterwards by that of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris. The professed object of both institutions was the improvement of Experimental Knowledge, and of the auxiliary science of Mathematics; but their influence on the general progress of human reason has been far greater than could possibly have been foreseen at the moment of their foundation. On the happy effects resulting from them in this respect, La Place has introduced some just reflections in his System of the World, which, as they discover more originality of thought than he commonly displays, when he ventures to step beyond the circumference of his own magic circle, I shall quote, in a literal translation of his words.

“The chief advantage of learned societies, is the philosophical spirit to which they may be expected to give birth, and which they cannot fail to diffuse over all the various pursuits of the nations among whom they are established. The insulated scholar may without dread abandon himself to the spirit of system; he hears the voice of contradiction only from afar. But in a learned society, the collision of systematic opinions soon terminates in their common destruction; while the desire of mutual conviction creates among the members a tacit compact, to admit nothing but the results of observation, or the conclusions of mathematical reasoning. Accordingly, experience has shewn, how much these establishments have contributed, since their origin, to the spread of true philosophy. By setting the example of submitting every thing to the examination of a severe logic, they have dissipated the prejudices which had too long reigned in the sciences; and which the strongest minds of the preceding centuries had not been able to resist. They have constantly opposed to empiricism a mass of knowledge, against which the errors adopted by the vulgar, with an enthusiasm which, in former times, would have perpetuated their empire, have spent their force in vain. In a word, it has been in their bosoms that those grand theories have been con-

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