MR. WEBSTER'S

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE,

BEFORE THE

MECHANICS' INSTITUTION.

I appear before you, gentlemen, for the performance of a duty, which is, in so great a degree, foreign to my habitual studies and pursuits, that it may be presumptuous in me to hope for a creditable execution of the task. But I have not allowed considerations of this kind to weigh against a strong and ardent desire to signify my approbation of the objects, and my conviction of the utility, of this institution; and to manifest my prompt attention to whatever others may suppose to be in my power, to promote its respectability, and to further its designs.

The Constitution of the Association declares its precise object to be, “Mutual Instruction in the Sciences, as connected with the Mechanic Arts."

The distinct purpose is to connect science, more and more, with art; to teach the established, and invent new, modes of combining skill with strength; to bring the power of the human understanding in aid of the physical powers of the human frame; to facilitate the co-operation of the mind with the hand; to augment convenience, lighten labour, and mitigate toil, by stretching the do

minion of mind, farther and farther, over the elements of nature, and by making those elements, themselves, submit to human rule, follow human bidding, and work together for human happiness.

The visible and tangible creation, into which we are introduced at our birth, is not, in all its parts, fixed and stationary. Motion, or change of place, regular or occasional, belongs to all or most of the things, which are around us. Animal life every where moves; the earth itself has its motion, and its complexities of motion; the ocean heaves and subsides; rivers run lingering or rushing, to the sea; and the air which we breathe moves and acts with mighty power. Motion, thus pertaining to the physical objects which surround us, is the exhaustless fountain, whence philosophy draws the means, by which, in various degrees, and endless forms, natural agencies and the tendencies of inert matter, are brought to the succour and assistance of human strength. It is the object of mechanical contrivance to modify motion, to produce it in new forms, to direct it to new purposes, to multiply its uses, by means of it to do better, that which human strength could do without its aid,—and to perform that, also, which such strength, unassisted by art, could not perform.

Motion itself is but the result of force; or, in other words, force is defined to be whatever tends to produce motion. The operation of forces, therefore, on bodies, is the broad field which is open for that philosophical examination, the results of which it is the business of mechanical contrivance to apply. The leading forces or sources

of motion are, as is well known, the

power of animals, There are various difficult application.

gravity, heat, the winds, and water. others of less power, or of more Mechanical philosophy, therefore, may be said to be, that science which instructs us in the knowledge of natural moving powers, animate or inanimate; in the manner of modifying those powers, and of increasing the intensity of some of them by artificial means, such as heat and electricity; and in applying the varieties of force and motion, thus derived from natural agencies, to the arts of life. This is the object of mechanical philosophy. None can doubt, certainly, the high importance of this sort of knowledge, or fail to see how suitable it is to the elevated rank and the dignity of reasoning beings. Man's grand distinction is his intellect, his mental capacity. It is this, which renders him highly and peculiarly responsible to his Creator. It is this, on account of which the rule over other animals is established in his hands; and it is this, mainly, which enables him to exercise dominion over the powers of nature, and to subdue them to himself.

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But it is true, also, that his own animal organization gives him superiority, and is among the most wonderful of the works of God on earth. It contributes to cause, as well as prove, his elevated rank in creation. His port erect, his face towards heaven, and he is furnished with limbs which are not absolutely necessary to his support or locomotion, and which are at once powerful, flexible, capable of innumerable modes and varieties of action, and terminated by an instrument of wonderful, heavenly workmanship, the human hand. This marvellous physical

conformation, gives man the power of acting, with great effect, upon external objects, in pursuance of the suggestions of his understanding, and of applying the results of his reasoning power to his own purposes. Without this particular formation he would not be man, with whatever sagacity he had been endowed. No bounteous grant of intellect, were it the pleasure of heaven to make such grant, could raise any of the brute creation to an equality with the human race. Were it bestowed on the Leviathan, he must remain, nevertheless, in the element where alone he could maintain his physical existence. He would still be but the inelegant, misshapen. inhabitant of the ocean, "wallowing unwieldy, enormous in his gait." Were the Elephant made to possess it, it would but teach him the deformity of his own structure, the unloveliness of his frame, though "the hugest of things," his disability to act on external matter, and the degrading nature of his own physical wants, which lead him to the deserts, and give him for his favourite home the torrid plains of the tropics. It was placing the King of Babylon sufficiently out of the rank of human beings, though he carried all his reasoning faculties with him, when he was sent away, to eat grass like an ox. And this may properly suggest to our consideration, what is undeniably true, that there is hardly a greater blessing conferred on man than his natural wants. If he had wanted no more than the beasts, who can say how much more than they, he would have attained? Does he associate, does he cultivate, does he build, does he navigate? The original impulse to all these, lies in his wants. It proceeds from the necessities

of his condition, and from the efforts of unsatisfied desire. Every want not of a low kind, physical as well as moral, which the human breast feels, and which brutes do not feel and cannot feel, raises man, by so much, in the scale of existence, and is a clear proof, and a direct instance, of the favour of God towards his so much favoured human offspring. If man had been so made as to have desired nothing, he would have wanted almost every thing worth possessing.

But doubtless the reasoning faculty, the mind, is the leading characteristic attribute of the human race. By the exercise of this, he arrives at the knowledge of the properties of natural bodies. This is science, properly and emphatically so called. It is the science of pure mathematics; and in the high branches of this science lies the true sublime of human acquisition. If any attainment deserve that epithet, it is the knowledge, which, from the mensuration of the minutest dust of the balance, proceeds on the rising scale of material bodies, every where weighing, every where measuring, every where detecting and explaining the laws of force and motion, penetrating into the secret principles which hold the universe of God together, and balancing world against world, and system against system. When we seek to accompany those, who pursue their studies at once so high, so vast and so exact; when we arrive at the discoveries of Newton, which pour in day on the works of God, as if a second fiat for light had gone forth from his own mouth ;-when, further, we attempt to follow those, who set out where Newton paused, making his goal their