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of these tendencies was further inflamed, by moral peculiarities in the character of those times;-by an abjectness of thought on the one hand, which could not help looking towards some intellectual superior, and by an impatience of dissent on the other. To this must be added an enthusiastic temper, which, when introduced into speculation, tends to subject the mind's operations to ideas altogether distorted and delusive.

These characteristics of the stationary period, its obscurity of thought, its servility, its intolerant disposition, and its enthusiastic temper, will be treated of in the four following chapters, on the Indistinctness of Ideas, the Commentatorial Spirit, the Dogmatism, and the Mysticism of the Middle Ages.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE INDISTINCTNESS OF IDEAS OF THE
MIDDLE AGES.

HAT firm and entire possession of certain clear

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and distinct general ideas which is necessary to sound science, was the character of the minds of those among the ancients who created the several sciences which arose among them. It was indispensable, that such inventors should have a luminous and steadfast apprehension of certain general relations, such as those of space and number, order and cause; and should be able to apply these notions with perfect readiness and precision to special facts and cases. It is necessary that such scientific notions should be more definite and precise than those which common language conveys; and in this state of unusual clearness, they must be so familiar to the philosopher, that they are the language in which he thinks. The discoverer is thus led to doctrines which other men adopt and follow out, in proportion as they seize the fundamental ideas, and become acquainted with the leading facts. Thus Hipparchus, conceiving clearly the motions and combinations of motion which enter into his theory, saw that the

relative lengths of the seasons were sufficient data for determining the form of the sun's orbit; thus Archimedes, possessing a steady notion of mechanical pressure, was able, not only to deduce the properties of the lever and of the center of gravity, but also to see the truth of those principles respecting the distribution of pressure in fluids, on which the science of hydrostatics depends.

With the progress of such distinct ideas, the inductive sciences rise and flourish; with the decay and loss of such distinct ideas, these sciences become stationary, languid, and retrograde. When men merely repeat the terms of science, without attaching to them any clear conceptions;-when their apprehensions become vague and dim;-when they assent to scientific doctrines as a matter of tradition, rather than of conviction, on trust rather than on sight; -when science is considered as a collection of opinions, rather than a record of laws by which the universe is really governed ;-it must inevitably happen, that men will lose their hold on the knowledge which the great discoverers who preceded them have brought to light. They are not able to push forwards the truths on which they lay so feeble and irresolute a hand; probably they cannot even prevent their sliding back towards the obscurity from which they had been drawn, or from being lost altogether. Such indistinctness and vacillation of thought appear to have prevailed in the stationary period, and to be, in fact, intimately connected

with its stationary character. I shall point out some indications of the intellectual peculiarity of which I speak.

1. Collections of Opinions.-The fact, that mere Collections of the opinions of physical philosophers came to hold a prominent place in literature, already indicated a tendency to an indistinct and wandering apprehension of such opinions. I speak of such works as Plutarch's five Books "on the Opinions of Philosophers," or the physical opinions which Diogenes Laërtius gives in his "Lives of the Philosophers." At an earlier period still, books of this kind appear; as for instance, a large portion of Pliny's Natural History, a work which has very appropriately been called the Encyclopædia of Antiquity; even Aristotle himself is much in the habit of enumerating the opinions of those who had preceded him. To present such statements as an important part of physical philosophy, shows an erroneous and loose apprehension of its nature. For the only proof of which its doctrines admit, is the possibility of applying the general theory to each particular case: the authority of great men, which in moral and practical matters may or must have its weight, is here of no force; and the technical precision of ideas which the terms of a sound physical theory usually demand, renders a mere statement of the doctrines very imperfectly intelligible to readers familiar with common notions only. To dwell upon such collections of opinions, therefore, both

implies, and produces, in writers and readers, an obscure and inadequate apprehension of the full meaning of the doctrines thus collected; supposing there be among them any which really possess such a clearness, solidity, and reality, as to make them important in the history of science. Such diversities of opinion convey no truth; such a multiplicity of statements of what has been said, in no degree teaches us what is; such accumulations of indistinct notions, however vast and varied, do not make up one distinct idea. On the contrary, the habit of dwelling upon the verbal expressions of the views of other persons, and of being content with such an apprehension of doctrines as a transient notice can give us, is fatal to firm and clear thought it indicates wavering and feeble conceptions, which are inconsistent with sound physical speculation.

We may, therefore, consider the prevalence of Collections of the kind just referred to, as indicating a deficiency of philosophical talent in the ages now under review. As evidence of the same character, we may add the long train of publishers of Abstracts, Epitomes, Bibliographical Notices, and similar writers. All such writers are worthless for all purposes of science, and their labours may be considered as dead works; they have in them no principle of philosophical vitality; they draw their origin and nutriment from the death of true physical knowledge; and resemble the swarms of insects that are

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