minations, and mathematics complete the evidence. Philosophy being the knowledge of the reason of things, all arts must have their peculiar philosophy, which constitutes their theory: not only law and physic, but the lowest and most abject arts are not destitute of their reasons, which might usefully employ the time of the studious; and the advantages resulting from this kind of employment have been amply manifested in the discoveries of modern times. One great obstacle to the progress of arts and sciences has been the neglect of practice in speculative men, and the ignorance and contempt of theory in mere practical men. What chimeras and absurdities the neglect of experience and practice has produced need not be mentioned; the mischiefs arising from a neglected theory are not so obvious; yet certainly it retards the progress of arts. All invention or improvement must be either casual or rational, including analogy or inference from similar cases, under the term rational. Now, although the foundations of arts have often been owing to some casual discovery, as gunpowder, or the loadstone, yet is this not to be trusted to alone. Improvements do not always flow from this source, but rather from the reflections of artists; and if these reflections were rendered more distinct, more communicable, and easier to be retained, by the proper use of signs and other philosophical helps, great advantages might be expected: it being certain that philosophical knowledge is more extensive, and more sure in the application; and besides gives a pleasure to the mind not to be expected from that which is merely historical. The bare intelligence and memory of philosophical propositions, without any ability to demonstrate them, is not philosophy, but history only. However, where such propositions are determinate and true, they may be usefully applied in practice, even by those who are ignorant of their demonstrations. Of this we see daily instances in the rules of arithmetic, practical. geometry, and navigation; the reasons of which are often not understood by those who practise them with success. And this success in the application produces a conviction of mind, which is a kind of medium between philosophical, or scientifical, and historical knowledge.'

We are of opinion that this is a term of such immensely wide and general import as to be capable of little satisfactory treatment in a compendium of science. Our aim has been to treat fully and philosophically of each of the great branches of human knowledge, as they successively present themselves in our alphabet; not neglecting that of the science of mind itself; or the best account we could obtain of the speculations of our ablest predecessors on the nature and operations of human thought. See the articles LOGIC and METAPHYSICS. Nor have we neglected to present the reader with the substance of the most important doctrines of ancient and modern times on the subjects ordinarily embraced under the term ETHICS, or MORAL PHILOSOPHY, See the last of these articles. We refer also to the article THEOLOGY, as suggesting the leading points and influences in which all true mental and moral philosophy will terminate. The arti

cle PHYSICS, in this volume, will dispe almost every other principal branch of jaks phy, taken in its widest sense. This paper be occupied chiefly with an historical sized certain principal philosophical systems; a the claims of experimental philosophy.

SECT. I. ANCIENT AND EXPLODED SYSTEE

Of the Chuldean philosophy much ha said, but very little is known. Astronomy to have been their favorite study; and now standing their extravagant assertions of the quity of that science, which they pretende ancestors had continued through a pers 470,000 years, Callisthenes, upon the most nute enquiry, which he made at the des Aristotle, found that their observations ret no farther back than 1903 years, or A. A. CE Even this is a more early period than Pro allows their science; for he mentions no C dean observations prior to the era of Nabonsor, or 747 years before Christ. That they c tivated something which they called philose at a much earlier period than this, cann questioned; for Aristotle, on the credit of most ancient records, speaks of the Cha magi as prior to the Egyptian priests, vi were certainly men of learning, before the of Moses. For any other science than tha the stars we do not read that the Chaldeans we famous; and this seems to have been cultiva by them chiefly as the foundation of jud astrology. If any credit be due to Plutarch Vitruvius, who quote Berosus (see BEROSES was the opinion of the Chaldean wise men an eclipse of the moon happens when that pr of its body which is destitute of fire is turned t wards the earth. Their cosmogony, as given Berosus, and preserved by Syncellus, seems to this, that all things in the beginning consisted of darkness and water; that a divine power, d ing this humid mass, formed the world; and the the human mind is an emanation from the D vine nature.

The claim of the Egyptians to an early kre ledge of nature is certainly well-founded; b as their science was the immediate source of of the Greeks, we shall defer our notice of it fr the present, and turn our attention to the Indi philosophy, as it was cultivated from a very early period by the brachmans and gymnosophist We pass over Persia, because we know of ! science peculiar to that kingdom, except the doc trines of the magi, which were religious rater than philosophical; and of them the reader wi find an account under the words MAGI, POLY THEISM, and ZOROASTER.

We are certain that the Indian philosophers, from whatever quarter they received their philo sophy, were held in high repute at a period very remote antiquity, since they were visited by Pythagoras and other sages of ancient Greece. 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 acquisi tion of science. The philosophy of the Indians has indeed from the beginning been engrafted on their religious dogmas, and seems to be a compound of extravagant metaphysics and su

ate

rstition, with a very slight mixture of the owledge of nature. The pundits of Hindosallow no powers whatever to matter, but troduce the Supreme Being as the immecause of every effect, however trivial. Brehm, the spirit of God,' says one of their ost revered authorities, is absorbed in selfontemplation. The same is the mighty Lord, ho is present in every part of space, whose mnipresence, as expressed in the Reig-Beid, or tigveda, I shall now explain. Brehm is one, nd to him there is no second; such is truly Brehm. His omniscience is self-inspired or elf-intelligent, and its comprehension includes very possible species. To illustrate this as far s 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 are not (to be awake, to sleep, and to be unconscious). It is separated from the universe, and independent of all. This omniscience is named Brehm. By this omniscient spirit the operations of God are enlivened. By this Spirit also the twenty-four powers of nature are animated. How is this? As the eye by the sun, as the pot by the fire, as iron by the magnet, 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 endued 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, causes the perception of sounds; 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, the five members of perception, the five elements, the tive senses, and 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 quotation, it is plain that all the motions in the universe, and all the perceptions of man, are, according to the brahmins, caused by the immediate agency of the Spirit of God, which seems to be here considered as the soul of the world. And it appears from some papers in the Asiatic Researches, that the most profound of these Orien tal philosophers, and even the authors of their sacred books, believe not in the existence of matter as a separate substance. Sir W. Jones says they hold an opinion respecting it similar to that of the celebrated Berkeley.

We have shown elsewhere that the metaphysical doctrines of the brahmins 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. From the brahmins believing in the soul of the world, not only as the agent, but as the immediate cause of every motion in nature, we can hardly suppose them to have made any great progress in that science which in Europe is cultivated under the name of physics. 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 in astronomy, geometry, and chronology, they appear to have made some proficiency at a very early period (see ASTRONOMY, Index). Their chronology and astronomy are indeed full of those extravagant fictions; but their calculations of eclipses, and their computations of time, are conducted upon scientific principles. They suppose,' says Mr. Halhed, that there are fourteen 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 favorites, 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.

Respecting the ancient philosophy of the Arabians and Chinese, the narrow limits of such an abstract as this hardly admit of our mentioning the conjectures of the learned. 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; but there is reason to believe that the Arabians, like other people in their circumstances, were little more than judicial astrologers. Pliny makes mention of their magi, whilst later writers tell us that they were famous for their ingenuity in solving enigmatica questions, and for their skill in the arts of divi nation: but the authors of Greece are silent cor cerning their philosophy; and there is no work

of greater antiquity than the Koran extant among them.

we

We pass, therefore, to the Phenicians, whose commercial celebrity has induced many learned men to allow them great credit for early science. If it be true indeed, as it seems probable, that the ships of this nation had doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and almost encompassed the peninsula of Africa long before the era of Solomon, cannot doubt that the Phoenicians had made great proficiency in navigation and astronomy, at a very remote period. Nor were these the only sciences cultivated by that ancient people: Moschus 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 it was with some of the successors of this sage that Pythagoras, as Jamblicus tells us, conversed at Sidon, and from them received his doctrine of Monads. Another proof of the early progress of the Phœnicians in philosophy may be found in the fragments of their historian Sanchoniatho, which have been preserved by Eusebius. 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 chao ic mass, which he calls mot.' This chaos, Cudworth thinks, was the same with the clementary water of Thales, who was also of Phoenician extraction; but Mosheim justly observes, that it was rather dark air, since Philo translates it aspa Zopwon. Besides Mochus and Sanchoniatho, Cadmus, who introduced letters into Greece, may undoubtedly be reckoned a philosopher. Several other Phoenician philosophers are mentioned by Strabo; but as they flourished at a later period, and philosophised after the systematic mode of the Greeks, they fall not properly under our notice. We pass on therefore to the philosophy of Egypt.

The Greeks confess that all their learning was derived from the Egyptians, either imported immediately by their own philosophers, or brought through Phoenicia by the sages of the east; and we know from higher authority that, at a period so remote as the birth of Moses, the wisdom of the Egyptians was 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 doubt and hieroglyphics. That they had some know ledge 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 asserters of the immortality, pre-existence, and transmigration of human souls, which they could not have been without believing the soul to be at least incorporeal, if not immaterial. Plato says that Thoth, Theut, or Taaut, called by the Greeks Hermes, and by the Romans Mercury, was the inventor of letters; and, lest we should suppose that by those letters nothing

Of preceptive doctrine' says Dr. Enfield his History of Philosophy, the Egyptians two kinds, the one sacred, the other vulgar. former, which respected the ceremonies of gion and the duties of the priests, was donkelep written in the sacred books of Hermes, but w too carefully concealed to pass down to poster The latter consisted of maxims and rules of tue, prudence, or policy. It is in vain toi: for accurate principles of ethics among an rant and superstitious people. And that ancient Egyptians merited this character is dent from this single circumstance, that th suffered themselves to be deceived by tors, particularly by the professors of the fac art of astrology.'

Phoroneus, Cecrops, Cadmus, and Orphe were among the earliest instructors of the Gree and they inculcated Egyptian and Phas doctrines in detached maxims, and enfer them, not by strength of argument, but by authority of tradition. Their cosmogonies we wholly Phoenician or Egyptian, disguised ca Grecian names; and they taught a future star of rewards and punishments. The planes the moon, Orpheus conceived to be ha worlds, and the stars to be fiery bodies he san: but he taught that they are all animated by divinities; an opinion which prevailed both Egypt and the east and it does not appear he gave any other proof of his doctrines, th confident assertion that they were derived fr some god. Among the Greeks, an ingenious an penetrating people, philosophy soon assumed the form of profound speculation. Two eine philosophers arose nearly at the same pers who may be considered as the parents of Grecian science, but of almost all the scie cultivated in Europe, prior to the era of ed Bacon: these were Thales and Pythagoras: whom the former founded the Ionic school, and

not on

latter the Italic from which two sprung the ous sects into which the Greek philosophers e afterwards divided. A bare enumeration these sects is all that our limits will afford; we shall give it in the perspicuous language Dr. Enfield, referring our readers for a fuller ount than we can give of their respective rits to his translation of Brucker's history. I. Of the Ionic school were, 1. The Ionic et proper, whose founder Thales had as his ccessors Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, polloniates, and Archelaus. 2. The Socratic hool, founded by Socrates, the principal of nose disciples were Xenophon, Eschines, imon, Cebes, Aristippus, Phædo, Euclid, lato, Antisthenes, Critias, and Alcibiades. 3. he Cyrenaic sect, of which Aristippus was the thor; his followers were, his daughter Arete, Legesias, Aniceris, Theodorus, and Bion. 4. The Megaric or Eristic sect, formed by Euclid f Megara: to whom succeeded Eubulides, Dioorus, and Stilpo, famous for their logical sublety. 5. The Eliac or Eretriac school, raised y Phædo of Elis, who, though he closely adered to the doctrine of Socrates, gave name to is school. His successors were Plistanus and Menedemus; the latter of whom, being a native of Eretria, transferred the school and name to is own country. 6. The Academic sect, of which Plato was the founder. After his death, nany of his disciples deviating from his doctrine, he school was divided into the old, new, and middle academies. 7. The Peripatetic sect, founded by Aristotle, whose successors in the Lyceum were Theophrastus, Strabo, Lycon, Aristo, Critolaus, and Diodorus. Among the Peripatetics, besides those who occupied the chair, were also Dicæarchus, 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 Hipparchis, the wife of Crates. 9. The Stoic sect, of which Zeno was the founder. His successors in the porch were Persæus, Aristo of Chios, Herillus, Sphærus, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Zeno of Tarsus, Diogenes the Babylonian, Antipater, Panatius, and Posidonius.

II. Of the Italic school were, 1. The Italic sect proper: it was founded by Pythagoras, a disciple of Pherecydes. The followers of Pythagoras were Aristaus, Mnesarchus, Alemæon, Ecphantus, Hippo, Empedocles, Epicharmus, Ocellus, Timæus, 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 Hippocrates philosophised after the manner of Heraclitus, and other philosophers borrowed freely from this system. 4. The Epicurean sect, a branch of the Eleatic, had Epicurus for its author; among whose followers were Metrodorus, Polyænus, Hermachus, Polystratus, Basilides, and Protarchus. 5. The Pyrr

honic or Sceptic sect, the parent of which was Pyrrho; his doctrine was taught by Timon the Phliasian; and after some interval was conti nued by Ptolemy, a Cyrenean, and at Alexandria by Enesidemus.' 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.

All the systematic philosophers pursued their inquiries into nature by nearly the same method. They established certain definite arrangements or classes, to some of 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 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. 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 (or time); geography out of where (or place); electricity, magnetism, and attraction, out of action and passion; and so in other instances.

This mode of philophising spread from Greece over the whole civilised world. It was carried by Alexander into Asia, by his successors into Egypt; and it found its way to Rome after the conquest of Greece. It was adopted by the Jews, by the Christian fathers, by the Mahometan Arabs during the caliphate, and by the schoolmen through all Europe, till its futility was exposed by lord Bacon. Its professors 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, made real discoveries in physical science, by experiments judiciously conducted on individual substances; but the science in repute still continued to be that of Generals.'

From the eighth to the fourteenth century of the Christian era, the whole circle of instruction, or 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. The works of the ancient Greek philosophers had

been hitherto read only in imperfect Latin translations; and, before the scholastic system was completely established, Plato and Aristotle had been alternately looked up to as oracles in science. The rigid schoolmen, however, universally gave the preference to Aristotle; because his analysis of body into matter and form is peculiarly calculated to keep in countenance that most incredible doctrine of the Romish church (transubstantiation); and, upon the revival of Greek learning, this preference was continued after the school philosophy had begun to fall into contempt.

At last Luther and his associates set the minds of men free from the tyranny of ancient names, both in science and theology; and many philosophers sprung up in different countries of Europe, who professed 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, entitled 1. De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum; and 2. Novum Organum Scientiarum, sive Judicia vera de Interpretatione Naturæ. 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, though we can neither copy nor abridge here. 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. This great man was no less an enemy to hypotheses and preconceived opinions, which he calls idola theatri, than to syllogisms; and since his days almost every philosopher of eminence, except Descartes and his followers (see CARTES), has professed to study nature according to the method so accurately laid down in the Novum Organum. Of this mode of philosophising we shall now give a short but accurate view, by stating its objects, comparing it with that which it superseded, explaining its rules, and pointing

out its uses.

SECT. II.-VIEW OF LORD BACON'S PHILO

SOPHY.

That unbounded object of the contemplation, curiosity, and researches of man, the universe, may be considered in various important points of view. It may be considered merely as a collection of existences, related to each other by means of resemblances and distinctions; situation, succession, and derivation, as making parts

of a whole. In this view it is the subje pure description: and, in order to acqu knowledge of the universe in this point of we must enumerate all the beings in it, men their sensible qualities, and mark all the retry for each. But this would be labor imma and, when done, an undistinguishable de A book containing every word of a hang would only give us the materials of thst guage. To make it comprehensible, it mor put into some form, which will comprehenda whole in a small compass, and enable the m to pass easily from one word to another. Of relations among words, the most obvious those of resemblance and derivation. An e mological dictionary, therefore, in which war are classed in consequence of their resemblanc and arranged by means of their derivative de tinctions, will greatly facilitate the acqu of the language.

Thus, too, the objects of nature around us be classed according to their resemblance, r then arranged in those classes by particular de ¦ tinctions. In this classification we process our faculty of abstracting our attention from circumstances in which things differ, and turn it to those only in which they agree. Br th faculty we can not only distribute the in duals into classes, but also subdivide thes classes into orders, genera, and species. This vast number of individuals resembling e other in the single circumstance of life, c poses the most extensive kingdom of anima If it be required that they shall further resemb in the circumstance of having feathers, a prod gious number of animals are excluded, and we form the inferior class of birds. We exclude great number of birds by requiring a fure similarity of web feet, and have the order a anseres. If we add lingua citiata, we come attention to the genus of anates. In this man ner may the whole objects of the universe arranged, divided, and subdivided, into ki doms, classes, orders, genera, and species.

To the

This classification and arrangement is called natural history, and is the only foundation any extensive knowledge of nature. natural historian, therefore, the world is a ci lection of existences, the subject of descriptive arrangement. His aim is threefold: 1. To ob serve with care, and describe with accuracy, 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 subordin ation, till he arrive at what are only accidental varieties, which are susceptible of no farther distribution; and to mark with precision principles of this distribution and arrangement, blages. 3. To determine with certainty the pa and the characteristics of the various asseTIticular group to which any proposed individual belongs.

the

Description, therefore, arrangement, and re ference, constitute the whole of his employment;

and in this consists all his science.

Were the universe to continue unchanged, this would constitute the whole of our knowledge of nature; but we are witnesses of an uninterrupted