80

HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE

General Remarks on the Progress and Character ofancient Science.

Though, in the course of the preceding pages, we havefrom time to time made incidental remarks on the causeswhich have affected the progress of science among theancients ; yet it may not be superfluous, in concludingthis division of our subject, briefly to recapitulate, andadd a few general observations on such causes, on thespirit and genius of the ancient methods, and its in-fluence on the true interpretation of nature.

If we consider man as a being gifted with the powersof observation and reason, and especially as receivingknowledge through the medium of the external senses,it might seem that the examination of nature, and theinvestigation of the laws by which its phenomena areregulated, would naturally and necessarily form bothan early object of attention, and one to which a pecu-liar importance would be generally attached. Never-theless we have observed that the case has been muchotherwise : and, in following the course of the gradualadvance of moral, as well as physical civilisation, wehave been compelled to acknowledge that the progressin this great department of intellectual improvement has"taken place so tardily, and to such a very limited extent,even under the most apparently favourable circumstances,that it may not be unimportant briefly to notice someof the causes which have probably tended to producesuch a result.

In the earlier stages of society, and with a large por-tion of mankind in all its stages, there are other andmore pressing wants to be satisfied before those of themind. But, supposing that we are arrived at a pointbeyond this state of things, and that the requisite free-dom from the immediate pressure of necessity is enjoyed,still it is long before the particular contemplation of „nature, with a view to tracing its order and harmony,