It was not the difficulty of interchange of ideas alone, nor the want of German science, which has spread thought as on wings through the world, and insured it a long continuance, that then induced the friends of philosophy and natural history in Magna Graecia and Asia Minor to wander on long journeys.

That ancient race knew the inspiring influence of conversation as it extemporaneously, freely, and prudently penetrates the tissue of scientific opinions and doubts.

The discovery of the truth without difference of opinion is unattainable, because the truth, in its greatest extent, can never be recognized by all, and at the same time.
Each step, which seems to bring the explorer of nature nearer to his object, only carries him to the threshold of new labyrinths.

The mass of doubt does not diminish, but spreads like a moving cloud over other and new fields; and whoever has called that a golden period, when difference of opinions, or, as some are accustomed to express it, the disputes of the learned, will be finished, has as imperfect a conception of the wants of science, and of its continued advancement, as a person who expects that the same opinions in geognosy, chemistry, or physiology, will be maintained for several centuries.
The founders of this society, with a deep sense of the unity of nature, have combined in the completest manner, all the branches of physical knowledge, and the historical, geometrical, and experimental philosophy.
The names of natural historian and natural philosopher are here, therefore, nearly synonymous, chained by a terrestrial link to the type of the lower animals.

Man completes the scale of higher organization.