The Royal Institution may in some degree supply the place of a subordinate university to those whose sex or situation in life has denied them the advantage of an academical education in the national seminaries of learning.
With regard to the special objects of the Institution, the theory of practical mechanics and of manufactures, he said:
We must be more practical than academies of science and more theoretical than societies for the improvement of arts; while we endeavour at the same time to give stability to our proceedings by an annual recurrence to the elementary knowledge which is subservient to the purposes of both and, as far as we are able, apply to practice the newest lights which may from time to time be thrown on particular branches of mechanical science. It is thus that we may most effectually perform what the idolised sophists of antiquity but verbally professed--to bring down philosophy from the heavens and to make her an inhabitant of the earth.
We may venture to affirm that out of every hundred of fancied improvements in arts or in machines ninety at least, if not ninety-nine, are either old or useless; the object of our researches is to enable ourselves to distinguish and to adopt the hundredth. But, while we prune the luxuriant shoots of youthful invention, we must remember to perform our task with leniency, and to show that we wish only to give additional vigour to the healthful branches, and not to extirpate the parent plant.
He spoke of the repository of models as being a supplementary room for apparatus exhibited and described in the lectures, and 'where a few other articles may perhaps deserve admission.' He mentioned the library and the Journals as free from commercial shackles, but made no mention of the workshops nor of the education of artisans.
When all the advantages which may reasonably be expected from this Institution shall be fully understood and impartially considered, it is to be hoped that few persons of liberal minds will be indifferent to its success or unwilling to contribute to it and to participate in it.
To that regulation which forbids the introduction of any discussions connected with the learned professions I shall always most willingly submit and most punctually attend. It requires the study of a considerable portion of a man's life to qualify him to be of use to mankind in any of them, and nothing can be more pernicious to individuals or to society than the attempting to proceed practically upon an imperfect conception of a few first principles only. In physic the wisest can do but little, and the ignorant can only do worse than nothing; and anxiously as we are disposed to seek whatever relief the learned and experienced may be able to afford us, so cautiously ought we to avoid the mischievous interference of the half-studied empiric. In politics and in religion we need but to look back on the history of kingdoms and republics, in order to be aware of the mischiefs which ensue when fools rush in where angels fear to tread.