k back into the schools of
regenerated Italy, you will see in them the works of the Greek masters of
philosophy; and if you attend to the science taught in them, you will
find it vague, obscure, and full of erroneous notions. You will find in
this early period of improvement branches of philosophy even applied to
purposes of delusion; the most sublime of the departments of human
knowledge--astronomy--abused by impostors, who from the aspect of the
planetary world pretended to predict the fortunes and destinies of
individuals. You will see in the laboratories alchemists searching for a
universal medicine, an elixir of life, and for the philosopher's stone,
or a method of converting all metals into gold; but unexpected and useful
discoveries you will find, even in this age, arise amidst the clouds of
deception and the smoke of the furnace. Delusion and error vanish and
pass away, and truths seized upon by a few superior men become permanent,
and the property of an enlightening world. Amongst the personages who
belong to this early period, there are two whom I must request you to
notice--one an Englishman, who pointed out the paths to the discovery of
scientific truths, and the other a Tuscan, who afforded the happiest
experimental illustrations of the speculative views of his brother in
science. You will see academies formed a century later in Italy, France,
and Britain, in which the sciences are enlarged by new and varied
experiments, and the true system of the universe developed by an
illustrious Englishman taught and explained. The practical results of
the progress of physics, chemistry, and mechanics, are of the most
marvellous kind, and to make them all distinct would require a comparison
of ancient and modern states: ships that were moved by human labour in
the ancient world are transported by the winds; and a piece of steel,
touched by the magnet, points to the mariner his unerring course from the
old to the new world; and by the exertions of one man of genius, aided by
the resources of chemistry, a power, which by the old philosophers could
hardly have been imagined, has been generated and applied to almost all
the machinery of active life; the steam-engine performs not only the
labour of horses, but of man, by combinations which appear almost
possessed of intelligence; waggons are moved by it, constructions made,
vessels caused to perform voyages in opposition to wind and tide, and a
power placed in human han