It is strange that so many things are before our Eyes, and that we do not see them. Your Handycraft Shops are full of ingenious Works; but yet we hardly mind them: And very useful and well contriv'd Instruments and Experiments want Spectators, who wou'd be wonderfully pleas'd, wou'd they take the pains to admire them. If a Learned Society have made some Improvements in Geometry, Anatomy, Mechanicks, or any other useful Science, it must not be expected, that the World will go back to so remote a Spring to thank and applaud them for the Usefulness of their Productions: For it will be more easie to enjoy the Benefit of their Discoveries and Improvements than to know them. The Determination of Longitude by the Satellites, the Discovery of the _Ductus Thoracicus_, a more convenient, and more exact Level, are not Novelties so fit to make a noise as a pleasant Poem, or a handsome Piece of Oratory. Altho' the Usefulness of Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy is obscure, yet it is real. To consider Mankind in their Natural State, nothing is more useful to them, than what may preserve their Lives, and produce those Arts, which are both great Helps and Ornaments to Publick Societies. As for what concerns the Preservation of Life, it peculiarly belongs to Physick; which for that reason is divided in the Academy into three Branches, which make three different sorts of Members of this Society, Anatomy, Chymistry, and Botanicks. Every Body knows of what Importance it is to have an exact Knowledge of Human Body, and of what Medicines may be extracted from Minerals and Plants. As for Arts, too tedious to be reckon'd, they depend some upon Natural Philosophy, others upon Mathematicks. One wou'd think at first, that if the Mathematicks were to be confin'd to what is useful in them, they ought only to be improv'd in those things, which have an immediate and sensible affinity with Arts, and the rest ought to be neglected as a Vain Theory. But this wou'd be a very wrong Notion. As for Instance, the Art of Navigation hath a necessary Connexion with Astronomy, and Astronomy can never be too much improv'd for the Benefit of Navigation. Astronomy cannot be without Opticks by reason of Perspective Glasses; and both, as all other Parts of Mathematicks, are grounded upon Geometry, and to go as far as you can, even upon Algebra.