II. which I felt at that age from pieces which my CHAP. present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible." 119 vision of With a view to a summary of the purport of Locke's dithis discourse, I shall avail myself of a division the sciof the sciences in the last chapter of Locke's ences. Essay. "All that can fall," he says, "within the compass of human understanding is either, first, the nature of things as they are in themselves, their relations, and their manner of operation; or, secondly, that which man himself ought to do, as a rational and voluntary agent for the attainment of any end, especially happiness; or, thirdly, the ways and means whereby the knowledge of both the one and the other of these are attained and communicated. I think science may, therefore, be divided into three sorts; uix, or natural philosophy, the end of which is bare speculative truth; and whatever can afford the mind of man any such, falls under this branch, whether it be God himself, angels, spirits, bodies, or any of their affections. Secondly, Пgaxтn, the skill of rightly applying our own powers and actions for the attainment of things good and useful, which is the seeking out of those rules and measures of human actions which tend to hap 119 Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful. Introduction, p. 117. edit. 1808. Of the whole of which work it may be said, eloquentiæ satis, sapientiæ parum. Two writers of most extensive celebrity in their own and in foreign countries (I mean Hume and Montesquieu) tinged, imperceptibly, to many authors themselves, the writings of the eighteenth century. The judgment of Burke is, perhaps, in the passage cited, warped by what he had read in Hume; and I think he is often misled by Montesquieu's notions concerning the paramount power of climate and other external causes on the mind, in his mechanical explanations of our sentiments of the sublime and beautiful. II. CHAP. piness, and the means to practise them. The end of this is not bare speculation, and the knowledge of truth, but right, and a conduct suitable to it. Thirdly, the third branch may be called Enμeitin, or the doctrine of signs, the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed, also, Aoyixn, or Logic." Thus far Mr. Locke. Applied to the esti mate of ism, and the im prove In order to apply his observations to the estimate of Aristotelism, and that of the additions Aristotel- made to it, I shall comply with common use in limiting the name of Natural Philosophy to the ments on it, knowledge of body, and in employing the word Metaphysicks to denote the knowledge of mind. 1. In natu- Our knowledge of bodies is derived solely from ral philosophy. observation and experience. It is naturally progressive; every age, every year may be expected to augment it; though not to bring us nearer to any more perfect science, or to discover more fully the real nature of bodies, or that substantial essence, from which all their sensible qualities are supposed to flow, and on which all their mutual powers, or actions, are supposed to depend. The knowledge of bodies, however, cannot be considered as merely speculative, in the ordinary sense of that word; since it has procured for man, and is daily procuring for him, many advantages and conveniences, and since it is continually giving to him a greater dominion over nature, and thereby tending continually to exalt him in the scale of the creation. 2. In meta With metaphysicks, as above limited, the case physicks. is quite different. In this science, if the first inquirers chose the right path, and were favour II. ably circumstanced for pursuing it with diligence CHAP. and perseverance, future discoveries of importance were scarcely to be expected. The phænomena were always present; the data were all before them; the only instruments that can be usefully employed, were ever ready at command. To this, the following exception may perhaps occur, but it is only an apparent one. In the latter part of the last century, metaphysicians paid much attention to what has been called the philosophy of sensation. They divided our perceptions by sense, into the natural and the acquired: they observed that the acquired were far more numerous than the natural, particularly those acquired through the eye; and that the natural or original perceptions through this organ served only as signs to introduce the acquired. Newton's great optical discoveries had naturally directed the attention of the philosophical world to the subject of vision; and a boy blind till the age of fifteen, successfully couched by the anatomist Cheselden, furnished an opportunity for making such experiments as established the above-mentioned, and many other conclusions. But the whole of this philosophy of the senses resulted from observations and experiments, made by means of the senses themselves; and was, therefore, not less susceptible of new discoveries than any other branch of natural philosophy. Among its successful cultivators, Dr. Reid 120 holds the most distin 120 See his Inquiry into the Human Mind, particularly his Geometry of Visibles, chap. vi. sect. 9. p. 168. et seq, L II. CHAP. guished place; and if his disquisitions on this subject shall be ascribed to metaphysicks, they will certainly constitute an advancement in that science, but the only one that has been made in it by the application of what he and Mr. Stewart call the new inductive or Baconian logic. In all other respects, the state of metaphysicks remains as Aristotle and Locke had left it: no addition has been made to the speculative knowledge of the mind; no new rule has been established for the practical improvement of its faculties. 3. In se meiology or logic. The third part of philosophy, according to Locke, is the doctrine of signs, or logic. In this department, Aristotle appears to me to have done more than any author before or after him. Not to speak of the Organum, his other writings collectively contain, on abstruse and important subjects, a greater number of complete divisions and accurate definitions, than is perhaps to be found in the most voluminous of our Cyclopædias. With regard to one science, indeed, but that of the loftiest kind, it must be gratefully acknowledged, that logic, or the doctrine of signs, has been carried, since the days of Aristotle, or even those of Archimedes, to a stupendous and almost indefinite extent; and the elevation to which this noble science of geometry has attained in modern times, is to be ascribed chiefly to the ingenious labour bestowed on the invention of signs to denote ratios comprehending the result of many others, and in simplifying the signs by which our notions of quantity in general are compared, and the results of our comparison surely drawn, and clearly CHAP. expressed.121 II. and Rhe toric. The fourth branch of science, and incom- 4. In practical philoparably the most important, is that which comes sophy, home to the business and bosoms of men 122, and comprising Ethics, which Locke, adopting Aristotle's phraseology, Politics, denominates the Practical. Upon this article, it would be improper in me to dilate, having exerted my best diligence in endeavouring to make publicly useful the Ethics and Politics; and now, last of all, the Rhetoric, in which three treatises, Aristotle's practical works are comprised. In Politics, the Stagirite was regarded, even by Locke, as a master 123; and with regard to the Ethics, I shall be contented with a single observation. In many Christian universities, a professor's chair has long been established, from which Ethics are taught as a matter of science, independently of that light of revelation, in comparison with which, all human knowledge is darkness. It happened, as might well be expected, that this academic department should sometimes fall to the share of men of distinguished abilities 124, who have favoured the world by the publication of their respective 121 The Marquis de Laplace, the great master of the science at present, appeared to think that semeiology (l'Analyse Moderne) might be carried a pitch higher than it has yet been, by considering "body generally, leaving the laws as they stand, of its particular affections; gravitation, impulsion, elasticity, &c." But our conversation at the" Institut," happened to be interrupted, and on the day before I left Paris. 122 Η περι τα ανθρωπινα φιλοσοφια. Aristot. 125 See above, p. 2. 124 Need I mention the names of Hutcheson, Smith, Paley, &c.? |