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HISTORICAL VIEW OP THE

pretensions. The obscure terms again in which manyof the statements of opinions, as well as facts, havebeen handed down to us, often leave us very much indoubt as to what were the real views or discoveries ofsome of the most eminent philosophers.

In the elucidation of these points the labours of themost able critics have been called forth; and though,on some such questions, considerable difference of opi-nion has prevailed, they have now been so fully dis-cussed, that most of them may be considered as com-pletely set at rest; and we can avail ourselves of thedecisions of some late writers with the fullest confidencein the soundness of the reasons on which they are built.We shall therefore generally content ourselves withadopting that view of such questions, which, upon ex-amining the authorities adduced, appears to us to pos-sess the highest probability; always, however, statingboth opinions where we feel them entitled to any thinglike equal consideration.

It will assist the apprehension of the particular classof discoveries and inventions of which we here proposeto treat, in the first instance, to distinguish clearly whatproperly fall under the designation of advances in phi-losophical truth. It is not every invention, howeveringenious, which is properly referable to this title, noreven every process of art which may be traced to aphilosophical principle; unless the knowledge of theprinciple really led to the practical application. Theprogress of the arts then will only be noticed so far asit was connected with that of science; so far as practicalexperience may have led to the suggestion of abstractprinciples, or mechanical contrivance may have resultedfrom philosophical reasoning.

In the earlier stages of society art must have pre-ceded science. The immediate necessities of life firstcalled forth the resources of invention, and it could nothe till a much later period that the human mind hadleisure to derive, from the objects of its daily notice,the elements of philosophical thought, or could be led to