rules of. See Newtonian Philosophy, No. 16. and the following article.

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**PHILOSOPHY**

Is a word derived from the Greek, and literally signifies the love of wisdom (a). In its usual acceptation, however, it denotes a science, or collection of sciences, of which the universe is the object; and of the term thus employed many definitions have been given, differing from one another according to the different views of their several authors. By Pythagoras, philosophy is defined επιστήμη τῶν ἐξ ὑποθέσεων, "the knowledge of things existing;" by Cicero, after Plato, scientia rerum divinarum et humarum cum causis; and by the illustrious Bacon, interpretatio naturae. Whether any of these definitions be sufficiently precise, and at the same time sufficiently comprehensive, may be questioned; but if philosophy in its utmost extent be capable of being adequately defined, it is not here that the definition should be given. "Explanation (says an acute writer*), is the first office of a teacher; definition, if it be good, is the Chart and last of the inquirer after truth; but explanation is one Scale of thing, and definition quite another." It may be proper, however, to observe, that the definition given by Cicero is better than that of Pythagoras, because the chief object of the philosopher is to ascertain the causes of things; and in this consists the difference between his

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(a) The origin usually attributed to the term philosophy has been already assigned in the article Philology. M. Chauvin gives it a turn somewhat different. According to him, the term is derived from φιλοσοφία, desire or study, and σοφία wisdom; and therefore he understands the word to mean the desire or study of wisdom: for (says he) Pythagoras, conceiving that the application of the human mind ought rather to be called study than science, set aside the appellation of wise as too assuming, and took that of philosopher. History of his studies; and those of the natural historian, who merely enumerates phenomena, and arranges them into separate classes.

Its objects. The principal objects of philosophy are, God, nature, and man. That part of it which treats of God is called theology; that which treats of nature, physics and metaphysics; and that which treats of man, logic and ethics. That these are not separate and independent sciences, but, as Bacon expresses it (p), branches from the same trunk, we shall endeavour to show, after we have given, agreeably to our usual plan, a short history of philosophy from the earliest ages to the present day.

To attempt to assign an origin to philosophy, would be ridiculous; for every man endeavours to ascertain the causes of those changes which he observes in nature; and even children themselves are inquisitive after that which produces the sound of their drums and their rattles. Children, therefore, and the most illiterate vulgar, have in all ages been philosophers. But the first people among whom philosophy was cultivated as a profession, was probably the Chaldeans. We certainly read of none earlier; for though we have more authentic accounts of the Hebrews than of any other nation of remote antiquity, and have reason to believe that no people was civilized before them, yet the peculiar circumstances in which they were placed, rendered all philosophical investigation to them useless, and even tended to suppress the very spirit of inquiry. The Egyptians indeed pretended to be the first of nations, and to have spread the blessings of religion and the light of science among every other people; but, from the earliest records now extant, there is reason to believe that the Chaldeans were a civilized and powerful nation before the Egyptian monarchy was founded.

Of the Chaldean philosophy much has been said, but very little is known. Astronomy seems to have been their favourite study; and at the era of Alexander's conquest of their country, they boasted that their ancestors had continued their astronomical observations through a period of 470,000 years. Extravagant claims to antiquity have been common in all nations (c). Calisthenes, who attended the Macedonian conqueror, was requested by Aristotle to inform himself concerning the origin of science in Chaldea; and upon examining into the grounds of this report, he found that their observations reached no farther backwards than 1923 years, or 2234 years before the Christian era. Even this is a remoter antiquity than Ptolemy allows to their science; for he mentions no Chaldean observations prior to the era of Nabonassar, or 747 years before Christ. That they cultivated something which they called philosophy at a much earlier period than this, cannot be questioned; for Aristotle, on the credit of the most ancient records, speaks of the Chaldean magi as prior to the Egyptian priests, who were certainly men of learning before the time of Moses. For any other science than that of the stars, we do not read that the Chaldeans were famous; and this seems to have been cultivated by them merely as the foundation of judicial astrology. Persuading the multitude that all human affairs are influenced by the stars, and professing to be acquainted with the nature and laws of this influence, their wise men pretended to calculate nativities, and to predict good and bad fortune. This was the source of idolatry and various superstitions; and whilst the Chaldeans were given up to such dotages, true science could not be much indebted to their labours. If any credit be due to Plutarch and Strabo, Vitruvius, who quote Berosus, (see Berosus), it was the opinion of the Chaldean wise men that an eclipse of the moon happens when that part of its body which is destitute of fire is turned towards the earth. "Their cosmogony, as given by Berosus, and preserved by Syncellus, seems to be this, that all things in the beginning consisted of darkness and water; that a divine power dividing this humid mass, formed the world; and that the human mind is an emanation from the Divine nature."

The large tract of country which comprehended the empires of Assyria and Chaldea, was the first peopled region on earth. From that country, therefore, the rudiments of science must have been propagated in every direction through the rest of the world; but what particular people made the earliest figure, after the Chaldeans, in the history of philosophy, cannot be certainly known. The claim of the Egyptians is probably best founded; but as their science was the immediate source of that of the Greeks, we shall defer what we have to say of it on account of the connection between the parent and the offspring, and turn our attention from Chaldean to Indian philosophy, as it has been cultivated from a very early period by the Brachmans and Gymnosophists. We pass over Persia, because we know not of any science peculiar to that kingdom, except the doctrines of the magi, which were religious rather than philosophical; and of them the reader will find some account under the words MAGI, POLYTHEISM, and ZOROASTER.

From whatever quarter India received its wisdom, we are certain that its philosophers were held in high repute long ago, at a period of very remote antiquity, since they were visited by Pythagoras and other sages of ancient Greece, who travelled in pursuit of knowledge. Yet they seem to have been in that early age, as well as at present, more distinguished for the severity of their manners than for the acquisition of science; and, as Dr Enfield observes, to have more resembled modern monks than ancient

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(b) Convenit igitur partiri philosophiam in doctrinas tres; doctrinam de nomine, doctrinam de natura, doctrinam de natura, doctrinam de homine. Quoniam autem partitiones scientiarum non sunt lineis diversis similes, quae coeunt ad unum angulum; sed potius ramis arborum, qui conjunguntur in uno trunco, qui etiam trunco ad spatium nonnullum integer est et continuus, antequam se partiatur in ramos. De aug. Scient. lib. iii. cap. i.

(c) This claim of the Babylonians is thus rejected with contempt by Cicero; "Contemnamus Babylonios, et eos, qui e Caucaeo coeli signa servantes, numeris, et motibus, stellarum cursus persequantur; Condemnamus, inquam, hos aut stultitiae, aut vanitatis, aut imprudentiae, qui 470 millia annorum, ut ipsi dicunt, monumentis comprehensa continent, et mentiri judicemus, nec secutorum reliquorum judicium, quod de ipso futurum sit, pertinere. De Divinatione, lib. i. § 19. The philosophy of the Indians has indeed from the beginning been grafted on their religious dogmas, and seems to be a compound of fanatic metaphysics and extravagant superstition, without the smallest seasoning of rational physics. Very unlike the philosophers of modern Europe, of whom a great part labour to exclude the agency of mind from the universe, the Pandits of Hindostan allow no powers whatever to matter, but introduce the Supreme Being as the immediate cause of every effect, however trivial. "Brahm, the Spirit of God," says one of their most revered Brahmans, "is absorbed in self-contemplation. The same is the mighty lord, who is present in every part of space, whose omnipresence, as expressed in the Rig Veda or Rigveda, I shall now explain. Brahman is one, and to him there is no second; such is truly Brahman. His omniscience is self-inspired or self-intelligent, and its comprehension includes every possible species. To illustrate this as far as I am able; the most comprehensive of all comprehensive faculties is omniscience; and being self-inspired, it is subject to none of the accidents of mortality, conception, birth, growth, decay, or death; neither is it subject to passion or vice. To it the three distinctions of time, past, present, and future, are not. To it the three modes of being (D) are not. It is separated from the universe, and independent of all. This omniscience is named Brahman. By this omniscient Spirit the operations of God are enlivened. By this Spirit also the 24 powers (E) of nature are animated? How is this? As the eye by the sun, as the pot by the fire, as iron by the magnet (F), as variety of imitations by the mimic, as fire by the fuel, as the shadow by the man, as dust by the wind, as the arrow by the spring of the bow, and as the shade by the tree; so by this Spirit the world is endowed with the powers of intellect, the powers of the will, and the powers of action; so that if it emanates from the heart by the channel of the ear, it causes the perception of sound; if it emanates from the heart by the channel of the skin, it causes the perception of touch; if it emanates from the heart by the channel of the eye, it causes the perception of visible objects; if it emanates from the heart by the channel of the tongue, it causes the perception of taste; if it emanates from the heart by the channel of the nose, it causes the perception of smell. This also invigorating the five members of action, and invigorating the five members of perception, and invigorating the five elements, and invigorating the five senses, and invigorating the three dispositions of the mind, &c., causes the creation or the annihilation of the universe, while itself beholds every thing as an indifferent spectator."

From this passage it is plain that all the motions in the universe, and all the perceptions of man, are, according to the Bramins, caused by the immediate agency of the Spirit of God, which seems to be here considered as the soul of the world. But it appears not from some papers in the Asiatic Researches, that the most profound of these oriental philosophers, and even one of the authors of their sacred books, believe not in the matter, and existence of matter as a separate substance, but hold an opinion respecting it very similar to that of the celebrated Berkeley. The Vedantists (says Sir William Jones), unable to form a distinct idea of brute matter independent of mind, or to conceive that the work of Supreme Goodness was left a moment to itself, imagine that the Deity is ever present to his work, and constantly supports a series of perceptions, which in one sense they call illusory, though they cannot but admit the reality of all created forms, as far as the happiness of creatures can be affected by them.

This is the very immaterialism of Berkeley; and in proof that it is the genuine doctrine of the Bramins, the learned president quotes the Bhagavat, which is believed to have been pronounced by the Supreme Being, and in which is the following sentence:

"Except the first cause, whatever may appear, and may not appear, in the mind, know that to be the mind's Mâyâ, or 'delusion,' as light, as darkness."

We have shown elsewhere (see Metaphysics, No. 269.) that the metaphysical doctrines of the Bramins, respecting the human soul, differ not from those of Pythagoras and Plato; and that they believe it to be an emanation from the great soul of the world, which, after many transmigrations, will be finally absorbed in its parent substance. In proof of their believing in the metempsychosis, Mr Halked gives us the following translation of what (he says) is a beautiful stanza in the Grecia: "As throwing aside his old clothes, a man puts on others that are new; so our lives, quitting the old, go to other newer animals."

From the Bramins believing in the soul of the world Physics of not only as the sole agent, but as the immediate cause of the Bra- every motion in nature, we can hardly suppose them min.

(D) To be awake, to sleep, and to be absorbed in a state of unconsciousness—a kind of trance.

(E) The 24 powers of nature, according to the Bramins, are the five elements, fire, air, earth, water, and akash (a kind of subtle ether); the five members of action, the hand, foot, tongue, anus, and male organ of generation; the five organs of perception, the ear, eye, nose, mouth, and skin; the five senses, which they distinguish from the organs of sensation; the three dispositions of the mind, desire, passion, and tranquillity; and the power of consciousness.

(F) If the work from which this extract is quoted be of as great antiquity as Mr Halked supposes, the Bramins must have been acquainted with the phenomena of magnetism at a much earlier period than any other philosophers of whom history makes mention. They have no inducement to investigate the laws of nature; because, according to the first principles of their philosophy, which, together with their religion, they believe to have been revealed from heaven, every phenomenon, however regular, or however anomalous, is produced by the voluntary act of an intelligent mind. Yet if they were acquainted with the use of fire-arms 4000 years ago, as Mr Halhed seems to believe, he who made that discovery must have had a very considerable knowledge of the powers of nature; for though gunpowder may have been discovered by accident in the East, as it certainly was in the West many ages afterwards, it is difficult to conceive how mere accident could have led any man to the invention of a gun. In astronomy, geometry, and chronology too, they appear to have made some proficiency at a very early period. (See Astronomy, No. 4.)

Their chronology and astronomy are indeed full of those extravagant fictions which seem to be essential to all their systems; but their calculation of eclipses, and their computations of time, are conducted upon scientific principles.

"It is sufficiently known (says Mr Davis *) that the Hindoo division of the ecliptic into signs, degrees, &c., is the same as ours; that their astronomical year is sidereal, or containing that space of time in which the sun, departing from a star, returns to the same; that it commences on the instant of his entering the sign Aries, or rather the Hindoo constellation Mesha; that each astronomical month contains as many even days and fractional parts as he stays in each sign; and that the civil differs from the astronomical account of time only in rejecting those fractions, and beginning the year and month at sunrise, instead of the intermediate instant of the artificial day or night. Hence arises the unequal portion of time assigned to each month dependent on the situation of the sun's apsis, and the distance of the vernal equinoctial colure from the beginning of Mesha in the Hindoo sphere; and by these means they avoid those errors which Europeans, from a different method of adjusting their calendar by intercalary days, have been subject to."

Mr Davis observes, that an explanation of these matters would have led him beyond his purpose, which was only to give a general account of the method by which the Hindoos compute eclipses, and to show that the science of astronomy is as well known among them now as ever it was among their ancestors. This he does very completely; but in the present short historical sketch, we can neither copy nor abridge his memoir. Suffice it to say, that he has shown the practical part of the Hindoo astronomy to be founded on mathematical principles; and that the learned Pandits appear to have truer notions of the form of the earth, and the economy of the universe, than those which are ascribed to their countrymen in general.

The same writer shows likewise, that the prodigious duration which the Hindoos attribute to the world, is the result of a scientific calculation, founded indeed on very whimsical principles. "It has been common with astronomers to fix on some epoch, from which, as from a radix, to compute the planetary motions; and the ancient Hindoos chose that point of time counted back, when, according to their motions as they had determined them, they must have been in conjunction in the beginning of Mesha or Aries, and coeval with which circumstance they supposed the creation. This, as it concerned the planets only, would have produced a moderate term of years compared with the enormous antiquity that will be hereafter stated: but having discovered a slow motion of the nodes and apsides also, and taken it into computation, they found it would require a length of time corresponding with 1955884890 years now expired, when they were so situated, and 2364115110 years more before they would return to the same situation again, forming together the grand anomalistic period denominated a Calpa, and fancifully assigned as the day of Brahma."

But though the mathematical part of the astronomy of the Pandits is undoubtedly respectable, their physical notions of the universe are in the highest degree ridiculous and extravagant. In the Vedas and Puranas, writings of which no devout Hindoo can dispute the divine authority, eclipses are said to be occasioned by the intervention of the monster Rahu; and the earth to be supported by a series of animals. "They suppose (says Mr Halhed) that there are 14 spheres, seven below and six above the earth. The seven inferior worlds are said to be altogether inhabited by an infinite variety of serpents, described in every monstrous figure that the imagination can suggest. The first sphere above the earth is the immediate vault of the visible heavens, in which the sun, moon, and stars, are placed. The second is the first paradise, and general receptacle of those who merit a removal from the lower earth. The third and fourth are inhabited by the souls of those men who, by the practice of virtue and dint of prayer, have acquired an extraordinary degree of sanctity. The fifth is the reward of those who have all their lives performed some wonderful act of penance and mortification, or who have died martyrs for their religion. The highest sphere is the residence of Brahma and his particular favourites, such as those men who have never uttered a falsehood during their whole lives, and those women who have voluntarily burned themselves with their husbands. All these are absorbed in the divine essence."

On ethics, the Hindoos have nothing that can be called philosophy. Their duties, moral, civil, and religious, are all laid down in their Vedas and Shasters, and enjoined by what they believe to be divine authority, which supersedes all reasoning concerning their fitness or utility. The business of their Pandits is to interpret those books, which are extremely ancient, and written in a language that has long been unintelligible to every other order of men; but no Pandit will alter the text, however impossible to be reconciled to principles established in his own practice of astronomy. On such occasions, the usual apology for their sacred books is, that "such things may have been so formerly, and may be so still; but that for astronomical purposes, astronomical rules must be followed *." The great duties of morality have been prescribed in every religious code, and they are not overlooked in that of the Hindoos, though the highest merit that a Bramin can have consists in voluntary acts of abstinence and mortification, and in contempt of death. Of the ancient philosophy of the Arabians and Chinese nothing certain can be said; and the narrow limits of such an abstract as this, do not admit of our mentioning the conjectures of the learned, which contradict each other, and are all equally groundless.

There is indeed sufficient evidence that both nations were at a very early period observers of the stars; and that the Chinese had even a theory by which they foretold eclipses (see Astronomy, No 2, 3); but there is reason to believe that the Arabians, like other people in their circumstances, were nothing more than judicial astrologers, who possessed not the smallest portion of astronomical science.

Pliny makes mention of their magi, whilst later writers tell us, that they were famous for their ingenuity in solving enigmatical questions, and for their skill in the arts of divination; but the authors of Greece are silent concerning their philosophy; and there is not an Arabian book of greater antiquity than the Koran extant (see Philology, Section II.).

Leaving therefore regions so barren of information, let us pass to the Phoenicians, whose commercial celebrity has induced many learned men to allow them great credit for early science. If it be true, as seems highly probable, that the ships of this nation had doubled the Cape and almost encompassed the peninsula of Africa long before the era of Solomon (See Ophir, No 15), we cannot doubt that the Phoenicians had made great proficiency in the art of navigation, and in the science of astronomy, at a period of very remote antiquity. Nor were these the only sciences cultivated by that ancient people: the learned Cudworth has, in our opinion, sufficiently proved that Mochus or Mochus a Phoenician, who, according to Strabo, flourished before the Trojan war, was the author of the atomic philosophy afterwards adopted by Leucippus, Democritus, and others among the Greeks; and that it was with some of the successors of this sage that Pythagoras, as Jamblichus tells us, conversed at Sidon, and from them received his doctrine of Monads (See Pythagoras). Another proof of the early progress of the Phoenicians in philosophy may be found in the fragments of their historian Sanchoniatho which have been preserved by Eusebius*. We are indeed aware that men of great celebrity have called in question the authenticity of those fragments, and even the very existence of such a writer as Sanchoniatho; but for this scepticism we can discover no foundation (See Sanchoniatho). His history may have been interpolated in some places by the translator Philo-Byblius; but Porphyry, Eusebius, and Theodoret, speak of it as a work of undoubted credit, and affirm that its author flourished before the Trojan war. Now this ancient writer teaches that, according to the wise men of his country, all things arose at first from the necessary agency of an active principle upon a passive chaotic mass which he calls mot. This chaos Cudworth thinks was the same with the elementary water of Thales, who was also of Phoenician extraction; but Mosheim justly observes that it was rather dark air, since Philo translates it aqua turbida. Be this as it may, nothing can be more evident than that the Phoenicians must have made some progress in what must surely be considered as philosophy, however false, so early as the era of Sanchoniatho; for speculations about the origin of the world never occur to untaught

Besides Mochus and Sanchoniatho, Cadmus, who introduced letters into Greece, may undoubtedly be reckoned among the Phoenician philosophers; for though it is not pretended that the alphabet was of his invention, and though it is by no means certain that the Greeks, at the time of his arrival among them, were wholly destitute of alphabetic characters (See Philology, No 130); yet the man who could prevail with illiterate savages to adopt the use of strange characters, must have been a great master of the science of human nature. Several other Phoenician philosophers are mentioned by Strabo; but as they flourished at a later period, and philosophized after the systematic mode of the Greeks, they fall not properly under our notice. We pass on therefore to the philosophy of Egypt.

It has been already observed that the Egyptians boasted of being the first of nations, and the authors of all the science which in separate rays illuminated the rest of the world. But though this claim was undoubtedly ill-founded, their high antiquity and early progress in the arts of civil life cannot be controverted. The Greeks with one voice confess that all their learning and wisdom came from Egypt, either imported immediately by their own philosophers, or brought through Phoenicia by the sages of the east; and we know from higher authority than the histories of Greece, that at a period so remote as the birth of Moses, the wisdom of the Egyptians was proverbially famous. Yet the history of Egyptian learning and philosophy, though men of the first eminence both ancient and modern have bestowed much pains in attempts to elucidate it, still remains involved in clouds of uncertainty. That they had some knowledge of physiology, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, are facts which cannot be questioned; but there is reason to believe that even these sciences were in Egypt pushed no farther than to the uses of life. That they believed in the existence of incorporeal substances is certain; because Herodotus assures us that they were the first assertors of the immortality, pre-existence, and transmigration of human souls, which they could not have been without holding those souls to be at least incorporeal, if not immaterial.

The author of Egyptian learning is generally acknowledged to have been Thoth, Thot, or Taaut, called by the Greeks Hermes, and by the Romans Mercury; but of this personage very little is known. Dionysius Siculus says that he was chief minister to Osiris, and that he improved language, invented letters, instituted religious rites, and taught astronomy, music, and other arts. The same thing is affirmed by Sanchoniatho, whose antiquity has been already mentioned; by Manetho an Egyptian priest, who flourished during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus; and by Plato, whose authority, as he resided long in Egypt, and was himself an eminent philosopher, is perhaps more to be depended upon than that of the other two. In the Philo-Byblus we are told that Thoth was the inventor of letters; and lest we should suppose that by those letters nothing more is meant than picture writing or symbolical hieroglyphics, it is added, that he distinguished between vowels and consonants, determining the number of each. The same philosopher, in his Phaedrus, attributes to Thoth the invention of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and hieroglyphic learning; and subjoins a disputation. History of disputation said to have been held between him and Thoth, then king of Egypt, concerning the advantage and disadvantage of his newly invented letters. Thoth boasted that the invention, by aiding memory, would greatly contribute to the progress of science; whilst the monarch contended, that it would enervate men's natural faculties by making them trust to written characters without exerting the powers of their own minds.

All this, if real, must have happened before the era of Moses; and since it is almost certain that alphabetical characters were in use prior to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt (see Philology, No. 24, 25), we may as well allow the invention to Thoth, as give it to an earlier author of unknown name. That arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, were cultivated in Egypt from the most remote antiquity, is affirmed by all the ancients, and made in the highest degree probable by the situation of the country. The first elements of astronomy have certainly been discovered by various nations, whose habits of life led them to the frequent observation of the heavens; and it is observed by Cicero, that the Egyptians and Babylonians, dwelling in open plains where nothing intercepted the view of the heavenly bodies, naturally devoted themselves to the study of that science. The annual overflowing of the Nile, which broke up the boundaries of their land, would lay the Egyptians under the necessity of adopting some method of settling those boundaries anew; and necessity we know to be the parent of invention. Hence their early acquaintance with practical geometry cannot well be doubted. Their custom of embalming their dead, and the perfection to which they carried that art (g), shows infallibly their knowledge of the properties of natural substances, and gives some reason to believe that they were not altogether strangers to anatomy; but if we allow them to have been at this early period anatomists acquainted with the power of drugs, we can hardly refuse them some skill in the art of physic, which they themselves traced up to their gods and demigods, to Serapis, Isis, and her son Horus or Apollo.

The art of alchemy has been said to have been known by the ancient Egyptians; and from the author of the Egyptian philosophy it has been called the Hermetic art. But though this is unquestionably a fiction, there is evidence that they were possessed of one art which is even yet a desideratum in the practice of chemistry. "Moises (we are told) took the golden calf, which his brother had made for idolatrous purposes, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it on the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it." Had this fact been related by Herodotus or Diodorus Siculus, it would have been deemed sufficient evidence that the Egyptians were even at that early period no strangers to the art of chemistry: and surely the evidence should not be the worse for coming from the pen of the Hebrew lawgiver, who was himself educated in the court of Egypt.

But though it is thus evident that the rudiments of almost every useful science were known in Egypt from the remotest antiquity, it does not appear that any of them was carried to a great degree of perfection, unless perhaps chemistry alone must be excepted. One would think that no science could have been more indispensably requisite to them than geometry. And yet though Pythagoras is said to have spent 22 years in Egypt studying that science and astronomy, he himself discovered (h) the famous 47th Prop. of Euclid's first book after his return to Samos. This, though a very useful, is yet a simple theorem; and since it was not reached by the Egyptian geometry, we cannot suppose that those people had then advanced far in such speculations. The same conclusion must be drawn with respect to astronomy; for Thales is said to have been the first that calculated an eclipse of the sun; and we nowhere read that the Egyptians pretended to dispute that honour with him. To this it may be replied, that Pythagoras was in Egypt undoubtedly taught the true constitution of the solar system, and what is more extraordinary, the doctrine of comets in particular, and of their revolutions, like the other planets, round the sun (i). We grant that he was taught all this; but it was not scientifically, but dogmatically, as facts which the priests had received by tradition from their early ancestors, and of which they had never questioned the truth nor enquired into the reasons. Of this we need no better proof than that the Pythagorean system of the sun was totally neglected by the Greeks as soon as they began to frame hypotheses and to speculate in philosophy (k).

(g) It is true that the dissection of some mummies has lessened the high opinion long entertained of the skill of the ancient Egyptians in the art of embalming; yet it must be granted that their knowledge of antiseptic drugs was great, since it is now certainly known, even from these dissections, that by means of such drugs they contrived to preserve rags of cloth from corruption for upwards of 3000 years.

(h) This discovery he claimed; and his claim was admitted by the Greek writers without having been directly controverted since. An excellent mathematician, however, has shown that the equality between the square of the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle, and the sum of the squares on the other two sides, was known to the astronomers of India at a period long prior to that of Pythagoras. Notwithstanding this, it is certainly possible that the sage of Samos may have made the discovery himself, though we think the contrary much more probable; for we agree with the able-writer already mentioned, that Pythagoras, who is generally believed to have conversed with Indian brahmans as well as Egyptian priests, may have derived from them "some of the solid as well as the visionary speculations with which he delighted to instruct or amuse his disciples." See Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. ii. Memoir xiii. Physic Class.

(i) This is recorded by Aristotle and Plutarch; and thus expressed by Ammianus Marcellinus.—"Stellas quasdam, ceteris similes, quarum ortus orbitusque, quibus sint temporibus praestituti humanis mentibus ignorari, lib. xxv. cap. 10.

(k) Fluris in supremis mundi partibus immotas persistere, et planetas his inferiores circa solem revolvi, terram pariter moveri cursu annuo, diurno vero circa axem propriam, et solem cen focum universi in omnium centro quiescere, But it may seem strange, and certainly is so, that the Egyptian priests, in the days of Pythagoras, should have preserved so great a discovery of their ancestors, and at the same time have totally forgotten the principles and reasoning which led to a conclusion apparently contrary to the evidence of sense. This is a difficulty which we pretend not to remove, though the fact which involves it seems to be beyond the reach of controversy. Perhaps the following observations may throw upon it a feeble light. According to Manetho, the written monuments of the first Thoth were lost or neglected in certain civil revolutions or natural calamities which befell the kingdom of Egypt. After many ages great part of them were recovered by an ingenious interpretation of the symbols which he had inscribed upon ancient columns; and the man who made this interpretation was called the second Thoth or Hermes Trismegistus. But thrice illustrious as this personage was, it is at least possible that he may have been much inferior to the former Hermes, and have read his writings and transcribed his conclusions without being able to comprehend the principles or reasoning which led to those conclusions. Any man who understands Latin might translate into his own tongue the conclusions of Newton; but much more would be requisite to make him comprehend the demonstrations of his sublime geometry. By what mode of reasoning the first Hermes (1.) was led to the true idea of the solar system, or whether it was by reasoning at all, cannot now be known; but it seems very evident, that when the intercourse between the Egyptians and Greeks first commenced, the wisdom of the former people consisted chiefly in the science of legislation and civil policy, and that the philosopher, the divine, the legislator, and the poet, were all united in the same person. Their cosmogony (for all the ancients who pretended to science framed cosmogonies) differed little from that of the Phoenicians already mentioned. They held that the world was produced from chaos by the energy of an intelligent principle; and they likewise conceived that there is in nature a continual tendency towards dissolution. In Plato's Timaeus, an Egyptian priest is introduced describing the destruction of the world, and asserting that it will be effected by means of water and fire. They conceived that the universe undergoes a periodical conflagration; after which all things are restored to their original form, to pass again through a similar succession of changes.

"Of preceptive doctrine the Egyptians had two kinds, the one sacred, the other vulgar. The former, which respected the ceremonies of religion and the duties of the priests, was doubtless written in the sacred books of Hermes, but was too carefully concealed to pass down to posterity. The latter consisted of maxims and rules of virtue, prudence, or policy. Diodorus Siculus relates many particulars concerning the laws, customs, and manners of the Egyptians; whence it appears that superstition mingled with and corrupted their notions of morals. It is in vain to look for accurate principles of ethics among an ignorant and superstitious people. And that the ancient Egyptians merited this character is sufficiently evident from this single circumstance, that they suffered themselves to be deceived by impostors, particularly by the professors of the fanciful art of astrology; concerning whom Sextus Empiricus justly remarks, that they have done much mischief in the world, by enslaving men to superstition, which will not suffer them to follow the dictates of right reason."

See EGYPT, MYSTERIES, MYTHOLOGY, &c.

From Egypt and Phoenicia philosophy passed into Grecian Greece; where it was long taught without system, as philosophy, in the countries from which it was derived. Pherecydes, Cercops, Cadmus, and Orpheus, were among the earliest instructors of the Greeks; and they inculcated Egyptian and Phoenician doctrines in detached maxims, and enforced them, not by strength of argument, but by the authority of tradition. Their cosmogonies were wholly Phoenician or Egyptian, disguised under Grecian names; and they taught a future state of rewards and punishments. The planets and the moon Orpheus conceived to be habitable worlds, and the stars to be fiery bodies like the sun: but he taught that they are all animated by divinities; an opinion which prevailed both in Egypt and the east: and it does not appear that he gave any other proof of his doctrines than a confident assertion that they were derived from some god. See ORPHEUS.

Hitherto

(1) Some authors, deeply skilled in the Hebrew language, have thought that the true system of the sun and planets may be perceived in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and that it is only from ignorance or carelessness of the translators that it does not appear in the English bible and other versions. The writer of this article confesses that his knowledge of the Hebrew is very limited, which is probably the reason that to him the arguments of these men appear weak and their criticisms fanciful. No man, however, has a higher veneration than he for the sacred volume, which he believes to have been given for nobler purposes that to teach its readers the science of astronomy; but could the principles of that science be found in it, he should be strongly inclined to think that the first Thoth was Joseph, and that the monarch to whom he was minister was the far-famed Osiris. Were there any solid foundation for this supposition, it would be easy to conceive how Thoth acquired his science, and how the Egyptian priests might retain just notions of the solar system in general, long after they had forgotten the evidence upon which he communicated those notions to their ancestors. Hitherto we have seen philosophy in its state of infancy and childhood, consisting only of a collection of sententious maxims and traditional opinions; but among the Greeks, an ingenious and penetrating people, it soon assumed the form of profound speculation and systematic reasoning. Two eminent philosophers arose nearly at the same period, who may be considered as the parents not only of Grecian science, but of almost all the science which was cultivated in Europe prior to the era of the great Lord Bacon: These were Thales and Pythagoras; of whom the former founded the Ionic school, and the latter the Italic; from which two sprung the various sects into which the Greek philosophers were afterwards divided. A bare enumeration of these sects is all that our limits will admit of; and we shall give it in the perspicuous language and just arrangement of Dr Enfield, referring our readers for a fuller account than we can give of their respective merits to his abridged translation of Brucker's history.

Of the Ionic School were, 1. The Ionic sect proper, whose founder Thales had as his successors Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Diogenes Apolloniates, and Archelaus. 2. The Socratic school, founded by Socrates, the principal of whose disciples were Xenophon, Alcines, Simon, Cebes, Aristippus, Phaedo, Euclid, Plato, Antisthenes, Critias, and Alcibiades. 3. The Cynic sect, of which Aristippus was the author; his followers were, his daughter Arete, Hegiasis, Anceiris, Theodorus, and Bion. 4. The Megaric or Eristic sect, formed by Euclid of Megara; to whom succeeded Eubulides, Diodorus, and Stilpo, famous for their logical subtlety. 5. The Eliac or Eretriac school, raised by Phaedo of Elis, who, though he closely adhered to the doctrine of Socrates, gave name to his school. His successors were Plistanus and Menedemus; the latter of whom, being a native of Eretria, transferred the school and name to his own country. 6. The Academic sect, of which Plato was the founder. After his death, many of his disciples deviating from his doctrine, the school was divided into the old, new, and middle academies. 7. The Peripatetic sect, founded by Aristotle, whose successors in the Lyceum were Theophrastus, Strato, Lycon, Aristo, Critolaus, and Diodorus. Among the Peripatetics, besides those who occupied the chair, were also Diocles, Eudemus, and Demetrius Phalereus. 8. The Cynic sect, of which the author was Antisthenes, whom Diogenes, Onesicritus, Crates, Metrocles, Menippus, and Menedemus, succeeded. In the list of Cynic philosophers must also be reckoned Hipparchia, the wife of Crates. 9. The Stoic sect, of which Zeno was the founder. His successors in the porch were Perseus, Aristo of Chios, Herillus, Sphercus, Cleanthus, Chrysippus, Zeno of Tarsus, Diogenes the Babylonian, Antipater, Panetius, and Posidonius.

Of the Italic School were, 1. The Italic sect proper: it was founded by Pythagoras, a disciple of Pherecydes. The followers of Pythagoras were Ari- sticus, Mnesarchus, Alcmaeon, Echphantus, Hippo, Empedocles, Epicharmus, Ocellos, Timaeus, Archytas, Hippasus, Philolaus, and Eudoxus. 2. The Eleatic sect, of which Xenophanes was the author: his successors, Parmenides, Melissus, Zeno, belonged to the metaphysical class of this sect; Leucippus, Democritus, Protagoras, Diagoras, and Anaxarchus, to the physical. 3. The Heraclitean sect, which was founded by Heraclitus, and soon afterwards expired: Zeno and Heter of Hippocrates philosophised after the manner of Heraclitus, and other philosophers borrowed freely from his system. 4. The Epicurean sect, a branch of the Eleatic, had Epicurus for its author; among whose followers were Metrodorus, Polyxenus, Hermachus, Polystatus, Basilides, and Protarchus. 5. The Pyrrhonic or Sceptic sect, the parent of which was Pyrrho: his doctrine was taught by Timon the Phliasian; and after some interval was continued by Ptolemy a Cyrenean, and at Alexandria by Aenesidemus.

Of the peculiar doctrines of these sects, the reader will in this work find a short account either in the lives of their respective founders, or under the names of the sects themselves. We shall only observe at present, that though many of them were undoubtedly absurd, and many wicked, it would yet perhaps be going too far to say with some, that the philosophy of Greece became impious under Diagoras, vicious under Epicurus, hypocritical under Zeno, impudent under Diogenes, covetous under Demochares, voluptuous under Metrodorus, fantastical under Crates, scurrilous under Menippus, licentious under Pyrrho, and quarrelsome under Cleanthes. Of the truth of this heavy charge every reader must judge for himself. We are strongly inclined to think, that there were virtues and vices peculiar to each sect; "and that the sects themselves had an affinity more or less direct with the different temperaments of men;" whence the choice of sectators often depended on physical influence, or a peculiar disposition of their organs. Nothing appears more natural than that those men who were born with great force of mind and strong nerves should discover a predilection for stoicism; while mortals, endowed by nature with more delicacy of fibres and keener sensibility, fled for refuge to the myrtles of Epicurus. People whose temperaments partook of no extremes, were always inclined either for the Lyceum or the Academy. Such as possessed solidity of understanding ranged themselves with Aristotle; and those who had only genius, or even pretensions to that endowment, went to augment the crowd of Platonists."

All the systematical philosophers, however, pursued Grecian philosophy into nature by nearly the same method made of their philosophy, as well as of ours, the universe, with all that it contains, was the vast object; but the individuals things which compose the universe are infinite in number and ever changing; and therefore, according to an established maxim of theirs, incapable of being the subjects of human science*. To reduce this infinitude, and to fix those fleeting beings, they had established certain definite arrangements or classes, to which every thing past, present, or to come, might be referred; and having ascertained, as they thought, all that could be affirmed or denied of these classes, they proved, by a very short process of syllogistic reasoning, that what is true of the class must be true of every individual comprehended under it. The most celebrated of these arrangements is that which is known by the name of categories; which Mr Harris thinks at least as old as the era of Pythagoras, and to the forming of which mankind would, in his opinion, be necessarily led by the following considerations: Every subject of human thought is either substance or attribute; but substance and attribute may each of them be History of be modified under the different characters of universal Philosophy, or particular. Hence there arises a quadruple arrangement of things into substance universal and substance particular; into attribute universal and attribute particular; to some one of which four not only our words and ideas, but every individual of that immense multitude of things which compose the universe, may be deduced. This arrangement, however, the learned author thinks too limited; and he is of opinion, that, by attending to the substances with which they were surrounded, the Grecian schools must soon have distinguished between the attributes essential to all substances and those which are only circumstantial; between the attributes proper to natural substances or bodies, and those which are peculiar to intelligible substances or minds. He likewise thinks, that the time and place of the existence of substances not present, must soon have attracted their attention; and that in considering the place of this or that substance, they could hardly avoid thinking of its position or situation. He is of opinion, that the superinduction of one substance upon another would inevitably suggest the idea of clothing or habit, and that the variety of co-existing substances and attributes would discover to them another attribute, viz. that of relation. Instead therefore of confining themselves to the simple division of substance and attribute, they divided attribute itself into nine distinct sorts, some essential and others circumstantial; and thus by setting substance at their head, made ten comprehensive universal genera, called, with reference to their Greek name, categories, and with reference to their Latin name predicaments. These categories are, substance, quality, quantity, relation, action, passion, when, where, position, and habit; which, according to the systematic philosophy of the Greeks, comprehend every human science and every subject of human thought. History, natural and civil, springs says Mr Harris, out of substance; mathematics out of quantity; optics out of quality and quantity; medicine out of the same; astronomy out of quantity and motion; music and mechanics out of the same; painting out of quality and site; ethics out of relation; chronology out of when; geography out of where; electricity, magnetism, and attraction, out of action and passion; and so in other instances.

To these categories, considered as a mere arrangement of science, we are not inclined to make many objections. The arrangement is certainly not complete; but this is a matter of comparatively small importance; for a complete arrangement of science cannot, we believe, be formed. The greatest objection to the categories arises from the use that was made of them by almost every philosopher of the Grecian schools; for those sages having reduced the objects of all human science to ten general heads or general terms, instead of setting themselves to inquire by a painful induction into the nature and properties of the real objects before them, employed their time in conceiving what could be predicated of substance in general, of this or that quality, quantity, relation, &c. in the abstract: and they soon found, that of such general conceptions as the categories there are but five predicables or classes of predicates in nature. The first class is that in which the predicate is the genus of the subject; the second, that in which it is the species of the subject; the third, is when the predicate is the specific difference of the subject; the fourth, when it is a property of the subject; and the fifth, when it is something accidental to the subject (see Logic, Part II. chap. ii. and iii.). Having proceeded thus far in their system, they had nothing to do with individuals but to arrange them under their proper categories, which was commonly done in a very arbitrary manner; and then, with the formality of a syllogism, to predicate of each the predicable of the genus or species to which it belonged. But by this method of proceeding, it is obvious that no progress whatever could be made in physical, metaphysical, or ethical science; for if the individual truly belongs to the category under which it is arranged, we add nothing to our stock of knowledge by affirming or denying of it what we had before affirmed or denied of the whole genus: and if it belong not to the category under which we arrange it, our syllogising will only give the appearance of proof to what must, from the nature of things, be an absolute falsehood. It is only by experiments made on various substances apparently of the same kind that they can be certainly known to belong to the same category; and, when this is done, all syllogistic reasoning from the genus to the species, and from the species to the individual, is but solemn trifling, as every proposition in this retrograde course takes for granted the thing to be proved.

Yet this mode of philosophizing spread from Greece almost over the whole world. It was carried by Alexander into Asia, by his successors into Egypt, and it found its way to Rome after Greece became a province of the empire. It was adopted by the Jews, by the fathers of the Christian church, by the Mahommedan Arabs during the caliphate, and continued to be cultivated by the schoolmen through all Europe, till its futility was exposed by Lord Bacon (m). The professors of this philosophy often displayed great acuteness; but their systems were built on mere hypotheses, and supported by syllogistic wrangling. Now and then indeed a superior genius, such as Alhazen and our countryman Roger Bacon, broke through the trammels of the schools, and, regardless of the authority of the Stagyrite and his categories, made real discoveries in physical science by experiments judiciously conducted on individual substances (see Bacon, Roger; and Optics, No 6); but the science in repute still continued to be that of Generals.

It was indeed a combination of absurd metaphysics with more absurd theology; and that which is properly called physics, had in Europe no place in a liberal education from the end of the eighth century to the end of the fourteenth. Towards the beginning of this period of darkness, the whole circle of instruction, or

(m) Scientiae, quas habemus, fere à Graecis fluxerunt. Quae enim scriptores Romani, aut Arabes, aut recentiores addiderunt, non multa aut magni momenti sunt: et qualiaeunque sint, fundata sunt super basin eorum quae inventa sunt à Graecis. Bacon.

Vol. XVI. Part I. History of the liberal arts as they were called, consisted of two branches, the trivium and the quadrivium; of which the former comprehended grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics; the latter music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, to which was added, about the end of the eleventh century, the study of a number of metaphysical subtleties equally useless and unintelligible.

Hitherto the works of the ancient Greek philosophers had been read only in imperfect Latin translations; and before the scholastic system was completely established, Plato and Aristotle had been alternately looked up to as the oracle in science. The rigid schoolmen, however, universally gave the preference to the Stagyrite; because his analysis of body into matter and form is peculiarly calculated to keep in countenance the most incredible doctrine of the Romish church (see Transubstantiation): and upon the revival of Greek learning, this preference was continued after the school philosophy had begun to fall into contempt, on account of much useful information contained in some of his writings on subjects of natural history, and his supposed merit as a natural philosopher. At last the intrepid spirit of Luther and his associates set the minds of men free from the tyranny of ancient names, as well in human science as in theology; and many philosophers sprung up in different countries of Europe, who professed either to be eclectics, or to study nature, regardless of every authority but that of reason. Of these the most eminent beyond all comparison was Francis Bacon Lord Verulam.

This illustrious man having read with attention the writings of the most celebrated ancients, and made himself master of the sciences which were then cultivated, soon discovered the absurdity of pretending to account for the phenomena of nature by syllogistic reasoning from hypothetical principles; and with a boldness becoming a genius of the first order, undertook to give a new chart of human knowledge. This he did in his two admirable works, intitled, 1. De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum; and 2. Novum organum scientiarum, sive Judicia vera de interpretatione Naturae. In the former of these works, he takes a very minute survey of the whole circle of human science, which he divides into three great branches, history, poetry, and philosophy, corresponding to the three faculties of the mind, memory, imagination, and reason. Each of these general heads is subdivided into minuter branches, and reflections are made upon the whole, which, though we can neither copy nor abridge them, will amply reward the perusal of the attentive reader. The purpose of the Novum Organum is to point out the proper method of interpreting nature; which the author shows can never be done by the logic which was then in fashion, but only by a painful and fair induction. "Homo naturae minister (says he) et interpretis tantum facit et intelligit, quantum de nature ordine re, vel mente observaverit; nec amplius scit aut potest. Syllogismus ad principia scientiarum non adhibetur, ad media axiomata frustra adhibetur, cum sit subtilitati nature longe impar. Assensum itaque constringit, non res. Syllogismus ex propositionibus constat, propositiones ex verbis, verba notionum tesserse sunt. Itaque si notiones ipsae (id quod basis rei est) confusae sint et te mere à rebus abstractae, nihil in illis qua superstrentur, est firmitudinis. Itaque spes est ea in inductione Vera."

To hypotheses and preconceived opinions, which he calls idola theatri, this great man was not less inimical than to syllogisms; and since his days almost every philosopher of eminence, except Descartes and his followers (see Descartes and Cartesians) has professed to study nature according to the method of induction so accurately laid down in the Novum Organum. On this method a few improvements have perhaps been made; but notwithstanding these, Lord Bacon must undoubtedly be considered as the author of that philosophy which is now cultivated in Europe, and which will continue to be cultivated as long as men shall have more regard for matters of fact than for hypothetical opinions. Of this mode of philosophising we shall now give a short, though we hope not inaccurate, view, by stating its objects, comparing it with that which it superseded, explaining its rules, and pointing out its uses; and from this view it will appear, that its author shares with Aristotle the empire of science.

The universe, that unbounded object of the contemplation, the curiosity, and the researches of man, may be considered in two different points of view.

In the first place, it may be considered merely as a collection of existences, related to each other by means of resemblances and distinction, situation, succession, and derivation, as making parts of a whole. In this view it is the subject of pure description.

To acquire an acquaintance with, or a knowledge of, the universe in this point of view, we must enumerate all the beings in it, mention all their sensible qualities, and mark all these relations for each. But this would be labour immense; and when done, an undistinguishable chaos. A book containing every word of a language would only give us the materials, so to speak, of this language. To make it comprehensible, it must be put into some form, which will comprehend the whole in a small compass, and enable the mind to pass easily from one word to another related to it. Of all relations among words, the most obvious are those of resemblance and derivation. An etymological dictionary, therefore, in which words are classed in consequence of their resemblances, and arranged by means of their derivative distinctions, will greatly facilitate the acquisition of the language.

Just so in nature: The objects around us may be grouped by means of their resemblance, and then arranged in those groups by means of their distinctions and other relations. In this classification we are enabled to proceed by means of our faculty of abstracting our attention from the circumstances in which things differ, and turning it to those only in which they agree. By the judicious employment of this faculty we are able not only to distribute the individuals into classes, but also to distribute those classes into others still more comprehensive, by discovering circumstances of resemblance among them: for the fewer the circumstances are which concur to form that resemblance which has engaged our attention, the greater is the number of similar circumstances which are neglected; and the more extensive will be the class of individuals in which the resemblance is observed. Thus a number of individuals resembling each other in the history single single circumstance of life, composes the most extensive kingdom of animals. If it be required, that they shall further resemble in the circumstance of having feathers, a prodigious number of animals are excluded, and we form the inferior class of birds. We exclude a great number of birds, by requiring a further similarity of web feet, and have the order of anseres. If we add lingua ciliata, we confine the attention to the genus of anates. In this manner may the whole objects of the universe be grouped, and arranged into kingdoms, classes, orders, genera, and species.

Such a classification and arrangement is called Natural History; and must be considered as the only foundation of any extensive knowledge of nature. To the natural historian, therefore, the world is a collection of existences, the subject of descriptive arrangement. His aim is threefold.

1. To observe with care, and describe with accuracy, the various objects of the universe.

2. To determine and enumerate all the great classes of objects; to distribute and arrange them into all their subordinate classes, through all degrees of subordination, till he arrive at what are only accidental varieties, which are susceptible of no farther distribution; and to mark with precision the principles of this distribution and arrangement, and the characteristics of the various assemblages.

3. To determine with certainty the particular group to which any proposed individual belongs.

Description, therefore, arrangement, and reference, constitute the whole of his employment; and in this consists all his science.

Did the universe continue unchanged, this would constitute the whole of our knowledge of nature: but we are witnesses of an uninterrupted succession of changes, and our attention is continually called to the events which are incessantly happening around us. These form a set of objects vastly more interesting to us than the former; being the sources of almost all the pleasures or pains we receive from external objects.

We are therefore much interested in the study of the events which happen around us, and strongly incited to prosecute it: but they are so numerous and so multifarious, that the study would be immense, without some contrivance for abbreviating and facilitating the task. The same help offers itself here as in the study of what may be called quiescent nature. Events, like existences, are susceptible of classification, in consequence of resemblances and distinction; and by attention to these, we can acquire a very extensive acquaintance with active nature. Our attention must be chiefly directed to those circumstances in which many events resemble each other, while they differ perhaps in a thousand others. Then we must attend to their most general distinctions; then to distinctions of smaller extent, and so on.

It is in this way accordingly that we have advanced in our knowledge of active nature, and are gradually, and by no means slowly, forming assemblages of events more and more extensive, and distributing these with greater and greater precision into their different classes.

In the zealous and attentive prosecution of this task a very remarkable and interesting observation occurs: In describing those circumstances of similarity among events, and particularly in distributing them according to those similarities, it is impossible for us to overlook that constancy which is observed in the changes of nature in the events which are the objects of our contemplation. Events which have once been observed to accompany each other are observed always to do so.

The rising of the sun is always accompanied by the light of day, and his setting by the darkness of night; the Sound argument is accompanied by conviction, impulse by motion, kindness by a feeling of gratitude, and the perception of good by desire. The unexpected experience of mankind informs us, that the events of nature go on in certain regular trains; and if sometimes exceptions seem to contradict this general affirmation, more attentive observation never fails to remove the exception. Most of the spontaneous events of nature are very complicated; and it frequently requires great attention and penetration to discover the simple event amidst a crowd of unessential circumstances which are at once exhibited to our view. But when we succeed in this discovery, we never fail to acknowledge the perfect uniformity of the event to what has been formerly observed.

But this is not all: We firmly believe that this universality will still continue; that fire will melt wax, will expected burn paper, will harden clay, as we have formerly observed it to do; and whenever we have undoubted proofs that the circumstances of situation are precisely the same as in some former case, though but once observed, we expect with irresistible and unshaken confidence that the event will also be the same.

It is not surely necessary to adduce many proofs of the universality of this law of human thought. The whole language and actions of men are instances of the fact. In all languages there is a mode of construction which is used to express this relation as distinct from all others, and the conversation of the most illiterate never confounds them, except when the conceptions themselves are confounded. The general employment of the active and passive verb is regulated by it. Turris eversa est a militibus; turris eversa est terra motu, express two relations, and no schoolboy will confound them. The distinction therefore is perceived or felt by all who can speak grammatically. Nor is any language without general terms to express this relation, cause—effect—to occasion. Nay, it is a fact in the mind of brutes, who hourly show that they expect the same uses of every subject which they formerly made of it; and without this, animals would be incapable of subsistence, and man incapable of all improvement. From this alone memory derives all its value; and even the constancy of natural operation would be useless if not matched or adapted to our purposes by this expectation of any confidence in that constancy.

After all the labours of ingenious men to discover the foundation of this irresistible expectation, we must be contented with saying that such is the constitution of the human mind. It is an universal fact in human thought; and for any thing that has been yet discovered, it is an ultimate fact, not included in any other still more general. We shall soon see that this is sufficient for making it the foundation of true human knowledge; all of which must in like manner be reduced to ultimate facts in human thought.

We must consider this undoubted feeling, this persuasion of the constancy of nature, as an instinctive anticipation of events similar to those which we have already already experienced. The general analogy of nature should have disposed philosophers to acquiesce in this, however unwelcome to their vanity. In no instance of essential consequence to our safety or well-being are we left to the guidance of our boasted reason; God has given us the surer conduct of natural instincts. No case is so important as this: In none do we so much stand in need of a guide which shall be powerful, infallible, and rapid in its decisions. Without it we must remain incapable of all instruction from experience, and therefore of all improvement.

Our sensations are undoubtedly feelings of our mind. But all those feelings are accompanied by an instinctive reference of them to something distinct from the feelings themselves. Hence arises our perception of external objects and our very notions of this externity (pardon the term). In like manner, this anticipation of events, this irresistible connection of the idea of fire with the idea of burning, is also a feeling of the mind; and this feeling is by a law of human nature referred, without reasoning, to something external as its cause; and, like our sensation, it is considered as a sign of that external something. It is like the conviction of the truth of a mathematical proposition. This is referred by us to something existing in nature, to a necessary and external relation subsisting between the ideas which are the subjects of the proposition. The conviction is the sign or indication of this relation by which it is brought to our view. In precisely the same manner, the irresistible connection of ideas is interpreted as the sensation or sign of a necessary connection of external things or events. These are supposed to include something in their nature which renders them inseparable companions. To this bond of connection between external things we give the name of CAUSATION. All our knowledge of this relation of cause and effect, is the knowledge or consciousness of what passes in our own minds during the contemplation of the phenomena of nature. If we adhere to this view of it, and put this branch of knowledge on the same footing with those called the abstract sciences, considering only the relations of ideas, we shall acquire demonstrative science. If we take any other view of the matter, we shall be led into inextricable mazes of uncertainty and error.

We see then that the natural procedure of our faculty of abstraction and arrangement, in order to acquire a more speedy and comprehensive knowledge of natural events, presents them to our view in another form. We not only see them as similar events, but as events naturally and necessarily conjoined. And the expression of resemblance among events is also an expression of concomitancy; and this arrangement of events in consequence of their resemblance is in fact the discovery of those accompaniments. The trains of natural appearance being considered as the appointments of the Author of Nature, has occasioned them to be considered also as consequences of laws imposed on his works by their great author, and every thing is said to be regulated by fixed laws. But this is the language of analogy. When a sovereign determines on certain trains of conduct for his subjects, he issues his orders. These orders are laws. He enforces the observance of them by his authority; and thus a certain regularity and constancy of conduct is produced. But should a stranger, ignorant of the promulgation of these laws, and of the exerted authority of the magistrate, observe this uniformity of conduct, he would ascribe it to the genius and disposition of the people; and his observation would be as useful to him for directing the tenor of his own conduct, as the knowledge of the subject himself of the real source of this constancy is for directing his.

Just so in nature, while the theologian pretends, from his discoveries concerning the existence and superintendence of God, to know that the constant accompaniment of events is the consequence of laws which the great Author and Governor of the universe has imposed on his works, the ordinary philosopher, a stranger to this scene, and to the unsearchable operations of the supreme mind, must ascribe this constancy to the nature of the things. There is a great resemblance between the expression natural law and grammatical rule. Rule in strict language implies command; but in grammar it expresses merely a generality of fact, whether of flexion or construction. In like manner, a LAW OF NATURE is to the philosopher nothing but the expression of a generality of fact. A natural or physical law is a generally observed fact; and whenever we treat any subject as a generally observed fact, we treat it physically. It is a physical law of the understanding that argument is accompanied by conviction; it is a physical law of the affection that distress is accompanied by pity; it is a physical law of the material world that impulse is accompanied by motion.

And thus we see that the arrangement of events, or the discovery of those general points of resemblance, is in fact the discovery of the laws of nature; and one of the greatest and most important is, that the laws of nature are constant.

There is no question that this view of the universe is incomparably more interesting and important than that which is taken by the natural historian; contemplating every thing that is of value to us, and, in short, the whole life and movement of the universe. This Object of study, therefore, has been dignified with the name of philosophy and of science; and natural history has been considered as of importance only in so far as it was conducive to the successful prosecution of philosophy.

But the philosopher claims a superiority on another account: he considers himself as employed in the discovery of causes, saying that philosophy is the study of the objects of the universe as related by causation, and that it is by the discovery of these relations that he communicates to the world such important knowledge. Philosophy, he says, is the science of causes. The vulgar are contented to consider the prior of two inseparably conjoined events as the cause of the other; the stroke on a bell, for instance, as the cause of sound. But it has been clearly shown by the philosopher, that between the blow on the bell and the sensation of sound there are interposed a long train of events. The blow sets the bell a trembling; this agitates the air in contact with the bell; this agitates the air immediately beyond it; and thus between the bell and the ear may be interposed a numberless series of events, and as many causes between the first impression on the ear and that last impression on the nerve by which the mind is affected. He can no longer therefore follow the nomenclature of the vulgar. Which of the events of this train therefore is the cause of the sensation? None of them: It is that something which inseparably connects any two of them, and constitutes their bond of union. These bonds of union or causes he considers as residing in one or both of the connected objects: diversities in this respect must therefore constitute the most important distinctions between them. They are therefore with great propriety called the qualities, the properties of these respective subjects.

As the events from which we infer the existence of these qualities of things resemble in many respects such events as are the consequences of the exertion of our own powers, these qualities are frequently denominated powers, forces, energies. Thus, in the instance just now given of the sound of a bell, we infer the powers of impulse, elasticity, nervous irritability, and animal sensibility.

In consequence of this inference of a necessary connection between the objects around us, we not only infer the posterior event from the prior, or, in common language, the effect from the cause, but we also infer the prior from the posterior, the cause from the effect. We not only expect that the presence of a magnet will be followed by certain motions in iron-filings, but when we observe such motions, we infer the presence and agency of a magnet. Joy is inferred from merriment, poison from death, fire from smoke, and impulse from motion. And thus the appearances of the universe are the indications of the powers of the objects in it. Appearances are the language of nature, informing us of their causes. And as all our knowledge of the sentiments of others is derived from our confidence in their veracity; so all our knowledge of nature is derived from our confidence in the constancy of natural operations. A veracity and credulity necessarily resulting from that law of our mental constitution by which we are capable of speech, conduct us in the one case; and the constancy of nature, and the principle of induction, by which we infer general laws from particular facts, conduct us in the other. As human sentiment is inferred from language, and the existence of external things from sensation; so are the laws of nature, and the powers of natural objects, inferred from the phenomena. It is by the successful study of this language of nature that we derive useful knowledge. The knowledge of the influence of motives on the mind of man enables the statesman to govern kingdoms, and the knowledge of the powers of magnetism enables the mariner to pilot a ship through the pathless ocean.

Such are the lofty pretensions of philosophy. It is to be wished that they be well founded; for we may be persuaded that a mistake in this particular will be fatal to the advancement of knowledge. An author of great reputation gives us an opportunity of deciding this question in the way of experiment. He says that the ancients were philosophers, employed in the discovery of causes, and that the moderns are only natural historians, contenting themselves with observing the laws of nature, but paying no attention to the causes of things. If he speak of their professed aim, we apprehend that the assertion is pretty just in general. With very few exceptions indeed it may be affirmed of his favourite Aristotle, the philosopher καὶ ἐπιστήμης, and of Sir Isaac Newton. We select these two instances, both because they are set in continual opposition by this author, and because it will be allowed that they were the most eminent students of nature (for we must not yet call them philosophers) in ancient and modern times. Aristotle's professed aim, in his most celebrated writings, is the investigation of causes; and in the opinion of this author, he has been so successful, that he has hardly left any employment for his successors beside that of commenting upon his works. We must on the other hand acknowledge that Newton makes no such pretensions, at least in that work which has immortalized his name, and that his professed aim is merely to investigate the general laws of the planetary motions, and to apply these to the explanation of particular phenomena. Nor will we say that he has left no employment for succeeding inquirers; but on the contrary, confess that he has only begun the study, has discovered but one law, and has enabled us to explain only the phenomena comprehended in it alone. But he has not been unsuccessful; his investigation has been complete; and he has discovered, beyond all possibility of contradiction, a fact which is observed through the whole extent of the solar system; namely, that every body, nay, that every particle in it, is continually deflected toward every other body; and that every deflection is, in every instance, proportional to the quantity of matter in that body toward which the deflection is directed, and to the reciprocal of the square of the distance from it. He has therefore discovered a physical law of immense extent. Nor has he been less successful in the explanation of particular phenomena. Of this there cannot be given a better instance than the explanation of the lunar motions from the theory of gravity begun by Newton "Mathesi sua faciem praefecit;" and now brought to such a degree of perfection, that if the moon's place be computed from it for any moment within the period of two thousand years back, it will not be found to differ from the place on which she was actually observed by one hundredth part of her own breadth.

Discimus hinc tandem qua causa argentea Phoebe Passibus haud aquae eat, et curr, subita nulli Hactenus astronomo, numerorum frema recusat. Quae toties animos veterum torere sophorum, Queque scholas hodie rauco certamine vexant; Oblivias conspicimus, nube pellente mathesi; Qua superos penetrare domos, et ardua coeli Newtoni auspiciis jam dat contingere templo.

We may now desire the champions of the science of causes to name any one cause which has really been discovered by their great master, whether in the operations of mind or of body. But they must not on this occasion adduce the investigation of any natural law, in which he has sometimes succeeded. With still greater confidence may we challenge them to produce any remarkable instance of the explanation of natural phenomena either of mind or body. By explanation we mean an account of the production, and an appreciation of all the circumstances, susceptible of a scrupulous comparison with fact, and perfectly consistent with it. It is here that the weakness of this philosopher's pretensions is most conspicuous; and his followers candidly acknowledge, that in the inquiries which proceed by experiment, we have not derived great assistance from Aristotle's philosophy. But this, say they, does not derogate from the pre-eminence of his philosophy, because he has shown that the particular fields of observation are to be cultivated only by means of experiment. But surely every field of observation is particular. There is no View of abstract object of philosophical research, the study of which shall terminate in the philosophy of universals.