present themselves as facts, opinions, or doubts. It is the foundation of friendly connexion which throws light on science, adds cheerfulness to life, and gives patience and amenity to the manners.
In the most flourishing period of ancient Greece, the distinction between words and writing first manifested itself most strongly amongst a race, which had raised itself to the most splendid intellectual superiority, and to whose latest descendants, as preserved from the shipwreck of nations, we still consecrate our most anxious wishes. It was not the difficulty of interchange of ideas alone, nor the want of German science, which has spread thought as on wings through the world, and insured it a long continuance, that then induced the friends of philosophy and natural history in Magna Græcia and Asia Minor to wander on long journeys. That ancient race knew the inspiring influence of conversation as it extemporaneously, freely, and prudently penetrates the tissue of scientific opinions and doubts. The discovery of the truth without difference of opinion is unattainable, because the truth, in its greatest extent, can never be recognized by all, and at the same time. Each step, which seems to bring the explorer of nature nearer to his object, only carries him to the threshold of new labyrinths. The mass of doubt does not diminish, but spreads like a moving cloud over other and new fields; and whoever has called that a golden period, when difference of opinions, or, as some are accustomed to express it, the disputes of the learned, will be finished, has as imperfect a conception of the wants of science, and of its continued advancement, as a person who expects that the same opinions in geognosy, chemistry, or physiology, will be maintained for several centuries.
The founders of this society, with a deep sense of the unity of nature, have combined in the completest manner, all the branches of physical knowledge, and the historical, geometrical, and experimental philosophy. The names of natural historian and natural philosopher are here, therefore,