It has frequently been regarded as a subject of discouraging consideration,
that while purely literary products of intellectual activity are rooted in
the depths of feeling, and interwoven with the creative force of
imagination, all works treating of empirical knowledge, and of the
connection of natural phenomena and physical laws, are subject to the most
marked modifications of form in the lapse of short periods of time, both
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by the improvement in the instruments used, and by the consequent expansion
of the field of view opened to rational observation, and that those
scientific works which have, to use a common expression, become 'antiquated'
by the acquisition of new funds of knowledge, are thus continually being
consigned to oblivion as unreadable. However discouraging such a prospect
must be, no one who is animated by a genuine love of nature, and by a sense
of the dignity attached to its study, can view with regret any thing which
promises future additions and a greater degree of perfection to general
knowledge. Many important branches of knowledge have been based upon a
solid foundation which will not easily be shaken, both as regards the
phenomena in the regions of space and on the earth; while there are other
portions of science in which general views will undoubtedly take the place
of merely special; where new forces will be discovered and new substances
will be made known, and where those which are now considered as simple will
be decomposed.
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