attained, and
doubtless there are few of the most highly educated who would not, in
many cases, assign different meanings to the same word; but if some
confusion on this subject is unavoidable, how much is that confusion
increased, as regards scientific subjects, by the mass of memoirs
written by parties, who, however acute their mental perceptions may
be, yet, from want of early education, do not assign to words that
accuracy of signification, and do not possess that perspicuity of
style, which is absolutely necessary for the communication of ideas!
Those, therefore, who, with different notions of language, read the
writings of such as we are alluding to, either fail to attach to them
any definite meaning, or attach one different from that which the
authors intended to convey; whence arises a want of reciprocal
intelligence, a want of unity of thought and purpose. Another defect
arising from the circumstance that persons of a high order of
education have not been generally the cultivators of experimental
science in this country, is, that the path is thereby rendered more
accessible to empiricism. Science, beautiful in herself, has thence a
class of deformed disciples, who succeed in entangling their false
pretensions with the claims of true merit. So much dust is puffed into
the eyes of the public, that it can hardly distinguish between works
of durable importance and the ephemeral productions of empirics; and
those who would otherwise disdain the notoriety acquired by
advertisement, end in adopting the system as the only means to avoid
the mortification of seeing their own ideas appropriated and uttered
in another form and in another's name.[20]

[20] In any thing we have above said, we trust it is
unnecessary to disclaim the slightest intention of
discouraging those whose want of conventional advantages
only renders their merit more conspicuous; we find fault
not with the uneducated for cultivating science, but
with the educated for neglecting it.

While the evils to which science is exposed by the necessarily
unfashionable character of experimental manipulation are neither few
nor trivial, there are still evils which arise from the directly
opposite cause--from excess of intellectual cultivation; as is shown
in the exclusive love of mathematics by a great number of
philosophers. Minds which, left to themselves, might have eliminated
the most valuable results, have, dazzled by the lustre c