Page:The Hunterian Oration, delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons ... February 14, 1817 (IA b22009358).pdf/10

2 of the means by which our present stock of knowledge has been acquired.

The history of the progress of information in the various departments of Arts and of Science, teaches this useful lesson, that man, so far as respects his mind and actions, is the creature of habit and example. The admonition of the wise man, ‘‘ Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it,” is not more applicable to the state of an infant in the confined circle of its family, than to that of an adult in the great family of the human race.

The cause of the progressive improvement in natural knowledge, and of its decline, in the different ages and countries of the world, is satisfactorily accounted for by adverting to the laws and regulations by which they were