culty, and without details: for details, even the most fummary, would fbade and efface the great lines, by means of which alone it is poffible to make a picture. On a general recollection or review of the flate of fociety, or human nature, in the eighteenth century, the ideas that recur the ofteneft, and remain uppermoft on the mind, are the three following: the intercourfes of men were more extenfive than at any former period with which we are acquainted; the progreffion of knowledge was more rapid; and the difcoveries of philofophy were applied more than they ever had been before to practical purpoles. The intercourfes of men and nations may be divided into perfonal and mental. In the period under review both these kinds of communication were more extended than they had ever before been. Navigation, tutored more and more by aftronomy, and farther and farther aided by the perfection of inftruments, for the menfuration of both fpace and time, explored the moft diftant feas and fhores, and commerce expanded itself in every direction. In the reigns of Lewis XV. and XVI. of France, but, above all, in the reign and under the auspices of George III. of Great Britain and Ireland, the fpirit of difcovery and exploration of the moft remote and unknown regions of the globe took a wider, though not more daring courfe, than it ever had done, even under Ferdinand and Ifabella, and their fucceffors on the Spanish throne, and our Elizabeth. Not only the north-western coafts of Africa were explored, but in fome measure the interior of Africa. A new and nobler paffion than the thirst of either gold or conqueft, enlifted in the fervice of navigation and difcovery; travels and voyages of difcovery were undertaken with no other view than that of afcertaining the real figure, and perfecting the knowledge of the globe; the ftudy and nature of man; and the alleviation of human miferies, and multiplica tion of human comforts and enjoyment, even among the moft remote and barbarous tabes, often, not only ungrateful, but jealous and hoftile to their difinterested benefactors.* Towards the clofe of the eighteenth century, the facilities of intercourse, communication, and correfpondence, might be faid to approximate, not only the capitals of Europe, but different quarters of the world. A voyage to India was not thought a greater matter, at the end of the eighteenth, than one across the Atlantic-ocean was at the end of the feventeenth century. The extenfion of navigation was accompanied with many and great improvements in marine aftronomy, the knowledge of diftances, and the bearings of coafts, and what may be called fubmarine geography. The knowledge of tides, winds, and currents, too, was proportionably advanced: fo that the longest voy ages were performed not only with greater fafety than in former centu Voyages of difcovery, in this century, were performed not only by the French, English, and Spaniards, but by the Dunes and Ruffians.-Ruffian colonies have been planted on the north-eaft coafts of Afia, communicating cafily, by means of numerous, ilands, and almoft touching on the north western coafts of America. All thofe European nations were careful to leave useful feeds, animals, and utenfils, among the fa vages. ries, but with much more expedition. In the last century the ave rage period of a voyage to and from the Eaft Indies, even on this fide the Ganges, including the time necef farily fpent in the country, for ladening and taking on board ftores, was three years at prefent, it is no more than eighteen months. Voyages have been frequently made from Bombay, and Madras, to Falmouth, in the space of three months and a fortnight. The intercourfe of minds, at firft merely verbal, was facilitated, improved, and extended, by the art of writing, and fill more, in later times, by the art of printing; and collateral and fubfequent improvements, fuch as the establishment of pofts and packets, and we must now add telegraphs. There was no preceding period when fo great a portion of the human race converfed with one another, verbally or mentally, and with to much facility, as in the years 1799 and 1800. There is a near connection between this extended intercourse and collifion of minds and the accelerated progrefs of knowledge. It fufficiently appears from hiftory, literary, natural, and civil, that all ufeful arts, and all the hints that have chiefly contributed to the promotion of fcience, have been furnished more from accident than defign: not fo much from the innate vigour and celeftial fire of the foul, as from an accumulation of particular facts, ob truded by chance, at different times, on different perfons, by an interchange of ideas, a mutual fupply of mutual defects of information on fubjects of common investigation, and the correction of mutual errors. In times and regions, folitary and fequeftered, Hippocrates obferved, with truth, that art was long and life fhort. In the age under review, and particularly towards its conclufion, the labour of art was fhortened more than it had ever been, in any for mer period, by its own progreffion. The manner in which extended intercourfe accelerates the progrefs of knowledge is two-fold:-it enlarges the fphere of facts; and, to our own experience and observations concerning those facts, it adds those of others. - Amafing difcoveries were made in the eighteenth century, not only of iflands and natural productions, but of mankind exifting in a ftate of fociety unknown before, and not even dreamt of.* Now, as every fact and well-founded conclufion is to be compared with every fact and every conclufion already known and formed, our knowledge is increafed, not merely as our knowledge of facts and claffes of facts increafes, but in a much higher, and, as it were, in geome. trical proportion. The converfion of the fpecula tive and learned world, chiefly by lord Baccon and Galileo, t from * That pudor circa res venereas, that particular kind of reserve and modesty, which had been generally confidered as peculiar to the human race, and whith Grotius and other philofophical theologians believed to be traditionary, and a proof in favour of the Chrif tian religion, was found to have no manner of exiftence in Otaheite. re + In the times of thefe luminaries there were many others, particularly in Italy, who had begun to feek knowledge, only by experiments, and induction from uniform re fults and obfervations. There was fuch a train of circumftances (among which the blow that was given to the authority of the pope, or the triumph of faith over reafon, was not the least) as must have led to the overthrow of the Ariftotelian and fcholaftic, and prepared the way for a founder philofophy, had they been deficient. vifionary vifionary theories to rational inquiries, may be faid to have been an improvement, not in kind, but in degree. This degree, however, has been fo great as to render the conclufion of the eighteenth almoft as remarkable an æra, in the hiftory of fociety and progreffion of improvement, as the commencement of the feventeenth century.-This accelerated progreffion of knowledge was not a little aided by an unufual boldnefs of inveftigation and freedom, from the refraints of theory. This freedom of reftraint, from theory, was indeed, in not a few inftances, carried to the length of mere empiricifm on the one hand, and to a contempt, of the juft and legitimate laws of philofophy and inveftigation, on the other. Some philofophers, botanis, chymifts, and mineralogifts, confined all inquiry to experiments, obfervations, and defcriptions of individual fubftances or fubjects Other philofophers, of the metaphyfical clafs, impatient of the tedioufnefs prefcribed by the experimental philofophy, overleaped natural, and pushed forward to efficient caufes. They talked much of fpiritual energy, attempted to fpeak, in the military phrafeology of France, to march in the road of inveftigation au pas de charge, and to storm the citadel of fcience with fixed bayonets. A branches of learning, of which man is capable, was the immortal Bacon. This plan has been adopted with very little alteration, almost by every author fince his time, and of late, among other writers, by the French Encyclopædifts. Thefe learned gentlemen declared, however, that, in forming their genealogical tree of the arts and fciences, their embarrafiment was great in proportion to the latitude that was prefented for arbitrary diftribution; in the option they had of referring the different branches of knowledge, either to the beings which they had for their objects, or to the different faculties of the foul. They leaned to this laft fide probably out of refpect to thofe philofophers, who treat of the origin of human knowledge, and particularly their own countryman Defcartes, and who argue, that, as we acquire our knowledge by thinking, we ought, in the first place, to inquire. how it is we think. But to others, who judge with proper freedom even of the French Encyclopædifts, and our Locke, and other great names, it appears that the mind does not ordinarily, in the acquifition of knowledge, follow that route. Our firft obfervations, they notice, are more naturally made on thofe fenfations which we receive from the objects that furround us, than upon the manner itself, in which we receive thofe fenfations. In making that our firft ftudy, which affects the fenfes, we proceed, with certainty, from that which we know, to that which we know not; whereas, if we begin with researches into the manner of our receiving our ideas, and the dared to mark out a plan of all the faculty of acquiring knowledge, we That the rapid progrefs of fcience may be more clearly perceived, and certainly recognifed, it would be proper, did our limits admit, to glance at all the arts and fciences; all the different objects of human knowledge. The first who conceived and who find ourselves caft upon a fea of hypothefis, without rudder or compafs to guide us. We think only through the medium of our fenfes. We fee that an acquaintance with our phyfical organization is neceffary to the knowledge of our intellectual faculties. We perceive that the impreffions made upon our organs, and their accompanying fenfations, cannot be confidered feparately from those exterior objects that produce them, and that, in order to our being able to judge how we come to have the notion of found, of colours, of taste, and fo on, we must first know how the air is put into vibration by fonorous bodies, what are the laws of reflection, and refraction, of what nature are the principles contained in the aliments of which we make ufe: and thus are we obliged, before we can proceed to any other ftudy, to return to that of our phyfical organization; to the ftudy of phyfical beings, and the acts which concern them. Other fpeculators, of the prefent day, we mean fince the times of the Encyclopædifts, and in the very twilight between the clofing and the fucceeding century, fteering, as it were, a middle courfe, in the arrangement of the arts and fciences, between lord Bacon and his followers, on the one hand, and thofe whom we fhall call the fenfationifts, on the other, obferve, that as the mind, whether it be confidered as a fpiritual and intellectual, or merely as a fentient being, is the mirror in which, by means of abftracted ideas, we attempt to furvey the external world; fo it is, by means of analogies drawn from the xternal world, that we endeavour VOL. XLII. to analyfe the operations of our minds. As, on the one hand, we examine matter, by metaphyfical abftractions, fo, on the other, we have no ideas or names for the operations of the mind, than fuch as are taken from objects of fenfe. Every thing we perceive or think of feems to be of a mixed nature. It is difficult to fay what is mind and what matter, nor is it at all neceffary, in the eye of just philosophy, that the difference fhould be afcertained. Yet, according to our conception of things, the difference between mind and matter is fufficiently clear. And the moft comprehenfive and accurate arrangement of all the branches of knowledge, perhaps, is the following: Firft, mind exercised on matter; The first of thefe claffes comprehends phyfics, or experimental philofophy, including optics, aftronomy, hydroftatics, pneumatics, mechanics, magnetifm, electricity, and chymistry. The fecond comprehends matters of fact, and hypothetical theories; the firft of thefe fubdivifions, comprehending the refults of particular obfervations and experiments, whether defigned or accidental; the fecond, that view of the operations of nature, which is formed by the imagination, according to habitual affociations; which is, indeed, loofe, popular, and only analogical; but which, however, is of use in dividing the labours of philofophy, and employing them in a courfe of well-directed experiments. This fecond fubdivifion of the fecond clafs refers principally to phyfiology, comprising the theory of the earth, mineralogy, [Q] nerally found one or more in the courfe of every century. * A very ftriking and important example of the means by which, in the hands of Providence, the world is governed; we have in the hiftory of the reformation, to which we may be permitted to refer with out being thought too digreflive, the rather that this grand event was the forerunner, and prepared the way to that general fermentation which burft forth, towards the clofe of the eighteenth century, in fo much political convulfion. Had the whole Chriftian world, at the time when Luther began to preach against indulgences, been devoted to the Roman faith, however abfurd the doctrines of the clergy, and however profligate their lives, he could not poffibly have met with any confiderable fuccefs. Such is the power of eftablished authority, and univerfally-received opinion. But the never-ceafing contefts between the popes, on the one part, and the emperor with other fovereign princes on the other, diminished of themfelves the reverence for the papal jurifdiction, and routed an inquiry into the grounds on which it was established; an inquiry, which was facilited by the revival of literature. The difcoveries of grave theologians, and antiquarians, were followed by the ridicule of wit and humour. Savanerola and Wickliff were aided by Dante, Petrarch, and Erafmus. In the beginning of the fixteenth century, the primitive doctrines of Chriftianity had taken root in moft countries of Europe. The materials for reformation were collected, and the foundations laid deep, be fore Luther and Calvin raifed and completed the fuperftructure. The minds of men being thus prepared, the doctrines of the reformers spread far and wide. The reformed religiou was adopted and protected by fovereign ftates and princes: and, after a war, continued with little interruption for more than a cen. tury, was finally eftablished as the national worthip of near the half of Europe, together with the balance of political power, by the peace of Weftphalia, in 1648. This peace, which terminated the difputes, religious and civil, between the catholic powers on the one hand, and the proteftant powers on the other, was the greatest event, and that which was most characteristic of the feventeenth century. From the treaty of Weftphalia to the middle of the eighteenth century, and upwards, the fpirit that ftill prefided in the great councils of Europe was a jealoufy of religious interests and views of political agrandizement, Politicians talked of the catholic and proteftant interefts; and, fo late as 1755-6, the great king of Pruffia, Frederic II. was called the Proteftant Herò. As the doctrines of the reformation fhook the papal throne, which has fince fallen, in the course of the feventeenth and eighteenth centuries, fo the fame doctrines, together with the advancement of lite * There is certainly no neceffary connection between human events, and a decade of decades. There feems, however, to be fome degree of connection between great events, and the time requifite to form, by education, and example, that public opinion and public fpirit and paffion, out of which great events spring. In a century there are, on an average, about four diftinct generations of men. rature |