lation that looks only to the day, or the petty requirements of the present. But once impress the people with the idea of its own perpetuity, and induce it to act thereon, and you change its character-you humanize it you make it a being "of large discourse, that looks before and after." Once ingraft this idea upon the minds of the people of this State, and they will live in it-they will love it. They have now a boundless future before them, but "shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it." Vague and indefinite hopes they indeed cherish, but they can not anticipate what is to be realized. Strike out, then, the grand plan for the future-give some distinctness to the object of the State's high aim-to the elevated stand, in distant ages, to which she aspires and even now they shall live in that future, just as they already live in the past. They will enjoy it by anticipation, and cheerfully urge the State on to that high destiny which the God of Man and Nature designed should be hers.

40

THE INFLUENCE OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY AND INVENTION ON

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PROGRESS.

ORATION,

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY

OF

BROWN UNIVERSITY,

SEPTEMBER 6, 1843.

ORATION.

GENTLEMEN OF THE SOCIETY:

THE influence of discovery in science, and of invention in art, on social and political progress, may certainly form an appropriate theme for an occasion like the present; and if, during the short time which has been left to us by the preceding exercises of the day, I should endeavor to draw your attention to this subject, rest assured that the attempt will not be prompted by a confidence in any peculiar qualification of mine for the task, but from a desire, in some manner, to fulfil a duty which, perhaps with too little caution, I undertook to perform.

We are disposed, I think, to ascribe too much of human progress to particular forms of government-to particular political institutions, arbitrarily established by the will of the ruler, or wills of the masses, in accordance with some theoretic abstraction. And this is natural enough in a country where popular opinion makes the law. But, to the mind that has formed the habit of penetrating beyond effects into the region of causes, it that the will of the one, or I think, appear may, the wills of the many, equally are under the dominion of a higher law than any that they may ordain; and that political and social institutions are, in the end, drawn or constrained to all their substantial improvements, by an order of mind still in advance of that which rules in politics, and flatters itself that dominion is all its own.

If it be true that knowledge is power, then it would seem to follow that any change in the arts or sciences, favorable or unfavorable, must be followed by corresponding changes in society. And such, in fact, we find to be the result. When the arts and sciences become stationary, all social and political institutions become stationary; when the arts and sciences become progressive, all social and political institutions become progressive. The universality of this fact clearly demonstrates the necessary connection of cause and effect between scientific and social progress. And if the form in which this state