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only as subservient to theology, it was natural to dwell longerupon these two chapters than upon any other of the science.They were gradually more and more extended, and were di-vided into many inferior chapters, till at last the doctrine ofspirits, of which so little can be known, came to take up asmuch room in the system of philosophy as the doctrine ofbodies, of which so much can be known. The doctrinesconcerning those two subjects were considered as makingtwo distinct sciences. Wliat are called Metaphysics orPneumatics were set in opposition to physics, and were cul-tivated not only as the more sublime, but, for the purposesof a particular profession, as the more useful science of thetwo. The proper subject of experiment and observation, asubject in which a careful attention is capable of makingso many useful discoveries, was almost entirely neglected.The subject in which, after a few very simple and almost,obvious truths, the most careful attention can discover no-thing- but obscurity and uncertainty, and can consequentlyproduce nothing but subtleties and sophisms, was greatlycultivated.
When those two sciences had thus been set in oppositionto one another, the comparison between them naturally gavebirth to a third, to what was called Ontology , or the sciencewhich treated of the qualities and attributes which were com-mon to both the subjects of the other two sciences. But ifsubtleties and sophisms composed the greater part of the Me-taphysics or Pneumatics of the schools, they composed thewhole of this cobweb science of Ontology , which was likewisesometimes called Metaphysics.
Wherein consisted the happiness and perfection of a man,considered not only as an individual, but as the member of afamily, of a state, and of the great society of mankind, wasthe object which the ancient moral philosophy proposed toinvestigate. In that philosophy the duties of human lifewere treated of as subservient to the happiness and perfectionof human life. But when moral, as well as natural philoso-phy, came to be taught only as subservient to theology, theduties of human life were treated of as chiefly subservient tothe happiness of a life to come. In the ancient philosophythe perfection of virtue was represented as necessarily pro-ductive, to the person who possessed it, of the most perfecthappi uess in this life. In the modern philosophy it was fre-‘jneutly represented as generally, or rather as almost always