This is very laughable, and shows how mankind, everywhere, constantly repeat the same follies. In our Illustrious annals men like these have appeared and disappeared; founded schools, been admired, had disciples, then passed into oblivion; their works, often voluminous, never met with; or occasionally dug out of mouldy bins and reproduced in some parts to show up the pretensions of a _new_ charlatan--to show how much better the same things were explained, or the same terms used by an old and forgotten author, 5,000 moons ago! These men, as with us, constantly overrate the value of their labours; the world really can get on without them. Getting together in _Congresses_ [Bed-la-mi], they pay (or affect) great respect to each other, and put on an _air_ of abstraction; they are supposed to be pondering upon the care of men and things, and feel the weight of responsibility. Other men may be trivial; but to those upon whom rests the due ordering of Nature, Care should be a genius and Dignity a presence. In these Meetings, nothing is worthy of debate unless it be _Scientific_. A plain paper, directed to a simple, useful object, and stating in ordinary and intelligible language the rules useful to the end, is not satisfactory. There should be something novel and obscure, or it is unlikely to come within the desired category. In truth, high and mighty _principles_ on which man and the gods exist and move and flourish, or upon a disregard of which decay and dissolution follow--these are alone the proper objects of philosophers and men of Science; and involved in the profound investigation of _principles_, the Congress disappears from the common eye, and is lost even to itself!