Excerpt from Literature, Art, and Science, Considered as Means of Elevating the Popular Mind: An Inaugural Lecture, Delivered at the Opening of the Lecture Courses, at the Royal Panopticon, Leicester Square, on Monday, June 19th, 1854 In addressing myself to this extensive field of discussion, it is not my intention to trespass upon your patience by a dry enumera tion of names and technical terms 3 I would rather ask you to accompany me in the endeavour to follow in the track of man, while engaged in that pursuit of knowledge, and in those attempts to, bring his creative powers into play, to which he is, alike, invited by the world' around him, and irresistibly impelled by the instinct of his own nature. In making use of the term mam, I should wish to be understood as having an eye both to the individual and to the entire race; for as much as the history of the aggregate development of human kind is marked by similar stages, and ex hibits analogous phenomena, with the development of the individual. At the first stage of that development, in what may be termed his boyhood, we find man engaged in exploring the world around him, in surveying its external aspect and tracing out its local divisions, and in distinguishing and classifying the individual objects which it presents to his View. In the very act of doing this, we find him gaining full possession of his senses, not merely as passive channels through which impressions from without reach his mind, but as obedient instruments of that mind, employed in such directions and for such purposes as the mind and its con trolling power, the will, may determine. And again, in the course of this process, we find that he gradually becomes conscious of an inward power of thought and of volition, and of a creative instinct which prompts him not only to place the objects around him in new combinations, other than those in which they natu rally appear, but to alter their form and fashion, so as to render them conformable to his own taste and fancy, and subservient to his own uses. The first steps made by man in the knowledge of the surrounding world are attended by corresponding advances in the knowledge of himself and of his own powers, and by couse quent attempts to create a world of his own - in and beside the world which he finds ready created for him - out of the materials which that world supplies. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.