But as the event, or matter of fact, which is expressed by a verb, may

be affirmed either of the person who speaks, or of the person who is

spoken to, as well as of, some third person or object, it becomes

necessary to fall upon some method of expressing these two peculiar

relations of the event. In the English language this is commonly done,

by prefixing, what are called the personal pronouns, to the general

word which expresses the event affirmed. _I came_, _you came_, _he_ or

_it came_; in these phrases the event of having come is, in the first,

affirmed of the speaker; in the second, of the person spoken to; in

the third, of some other person or object. The first formers of

language, it may be imagined, might have done the same thing, and

prefixing in the same manner the two first personal pronouns, to the

same termination of the verb, which expressed the third person

singular, might have said _ego venit_, _tu venit_, as well as _ille_

or _illud venit_. And I make no doubt but they would have done so, if

at the time when they had first occasion to express these relations of

the verb there had been any such words as either _ego_ or _tu_ in

their language. But in this early period of the language, which we are

now endeavouring to describe, it is extremely improbable that any such

words would be known. Though custom has now rendered them familiar to

us, they, both of them, express ideas extremely metaphysical and

abstract. The word _I_, for example, is a word of a very particular

species. Whatever speaks may denote itself by this personal pronoun.

The word _I_, therefore, is a general word, capable of being

predicated, as the logicians say, of an infinite variety of objects.

It differs, however, from all other general words in this respect;

that the **objects of which it may be predicated, do not form any

particular species of objects distinguished from all others. The {319}

word _I_, does not, like the word _man_, denote a particular class of

objects separated from all others by peculiar qualities of their own.

It is far from being the name of a species, but, on the contrary,

whenever it is made use of, it always denotes a precise individual,

the particular person who then speaks. It may be said to be, at once,

both what the logicians call, a singular, and what they call, a common

term; and to join, in its signification the seemingly opposite

qualities of the most precise individuality and the most extensive

generalization. This word, therefore, expressing so very abstract and

metaphysical an idea, would not easily or readily occur to the first

formers of language. What are called the personal pronouns, it may be

observed, are among the last words of which children learn to make

use. A child, speaking of itself, says, _Billy walks_, _Billy sits_,

**instead of _I walk_, _I sit_. As in the beginnings of language,

therefore, mankind seem to have evaded the invention of at least the

more abstract prepositions, and to have expressed the same relations

which these now stand for, by varying the termination of the

co-relative term, so they likewise would naturally attempt to evade

the necessity of inventing those more abstract pronouns by varying the

termination of the verb, according as the event which it expressed was

intended to be affirmed of the first, second, or third person. This

seems, accordingly, to be the universal practice of all the ancient

languages. In Latin, _veni_, _venisti_, _venit_, sufficiently denote,

without any other addition, the different events expressed by the

English phrases, _I came_, _you came_, _he_ or _it came_. The verb

would, for the same reason, vary its termination, according as the

event was intended to be affirmed of the first, second, or third

persons plural; and what is expressed by the English phrases, _we

came_, _ye came_, _they came_, would be denoted by the Latin words,

_venimus_, **_venistis_, _veneunt_. Those primitive languages, too,

which upon account of the difficulty of inventing numeral names, had

introduced a dual, as well as a plural number, into the declension of

their nouns substantive, would probably, from analogy, do the same

thing in the conjugations of their verbs. And thus in all original

languages, we might expect to find, at least six, if not eight or nine

variations, in the termination of every verb, according as the event

which it denoted was meant to be affirmed of the first, second, or

third persons singular, dual, or plural. These variations again being

repeated, along with others, through all its different tenses, through

all its different modes, and through all its different voices, must

necessarily have rendered their conjugations still more intricate and

complex than their declensions.

Language would probably have continued upon this footing in all

countries, nor would ever have grown more simple in its declensions

and conjugations, had it not become more complex in its composition,

in consequence of the mixture of several languages with one another,

occasioned by the mixture of different nations. As long as any {320}

language was spoke by those only who learned it in their infancy, the

intricacy of its declensions and conjugations could occasion no great

embarrassment. The far greater part of those who had occasion to speak

it, had acquired it at so very early a period of their lives, so

insensibly and by such slow degrees, that they were scarce ever

sensible of the difficulty. But when two nations came to be mixed with

one another, either by conquest or migration, the case would be very

different. Each nation, in order to make itself intelligible to those

with whom it was under the necessity of conversing, would be obliged

to learn the language of the other. The greater part of individuals

too, learning the new language, not by art, or by remounting to its

rudiments and first principle, but by rote, and by what they commonly

heard in conversation, would be extremely perplexed by the intricacy

of its declensions and conjugations. They would endeavour, therefore,

to supply their ignorance of these, by whatever shift the language

could afford them. Their ignorance of the declensions they would

naturally supply by the use of prepositions; and a Lombard, who was

attempting to speak Latin, and wanted to express that such a person

was a citizen of Rome, or a benefactor to Rome, if he happened not to

be acquainted with the genitive and dative cases of the word _Roma_,

would naturally express himself by prefixing the prepositions _ad_ and

_de_ to the nominative; and instead of _Romæ_, would say, _ad Roma_,

and _de Roma_. _Al Roma_ and _di Roma_, accordingly, is the manner in

which the present Italians, the descendants of the ancient Lombards

and Romans, express this and all other similar relations. And in this

manner prepositions seem to have been introduced, in the room of the

ancient declensions. The same alteration has, I am informed, been

produced upon the Greek language, since the taking of Constantinople

by the Turks. The words are, in a great measure, the same as before;

but the grammar is entirely lost, prepositions having come in the

place of the old declensions. This change is undoubtedly a

simplification of the language, in point of rudiments and principle.

It introduces, instead of a great variety of declensions, one

universal declension, which is the same in every word, of whatever

gender, number, or termination.

A similar expedient enables men, in the situation above mentioned, to

get rid of almost the whole intricacy of their conjugations. There is

in every language a verb, known by the name of the substantive verb;

in Latin, _sum_; in English, _I am_. This verb denotes not the

existence of any particular event, but existence in general. It is,

upon that account, the most abstract and metaphysical of all verbs;

and, consequently, could by no means be a word of early invention.

When it came to be invented, however, as it had all the tenses and

modes of any other verb, by being joined with the passive participle,

it was capable of supplying the place of the whole passive voice, and

of rendering this part of their conjugations as simple and uniform as

the {321} use of prepositions had rendered their declensions. A

Lombard, who wanted to say, _I am loved_, but could not recollect the

word _amor_, naturally endeavoured to supply his ignorance, by saying

_ego sum amatus_. _Io sono amato_, is at this day the Italian

expression, which corresponds to the English phrase above mentioned.

There is another verb, which, in the same manner, runs through all

languages, and which is distinguished by the name of the possessive

verb; in Latin, _habeo_; in English, _I have_. This verb, likewise,

denotes an event of an extremely abstract and metaphysical nature,

and, consequently, cannot be supposed to have been a word of the

earliest invention. When it came to be invented, however, by being

applied to the passive participle, it was capable of supplying a great

part of the active voice, as the substantive verb had supplied the

whole of the passive. A Lombard, who wanted to say, _I had loved_, but

could not recollect the word _amaveram_, would endeavour to supply the

place of it, by saying either _ego habebam amatum_ or _ego habui

amatum_. _Io avevá amato_, or _Io ebbi amato_, are the correspondent

Italian expressions at this day. And thus upon the intermixture of

different nations with one another, the conjugations, by means of

different auxiliary verbs, were made to approach the simplicity and

uniformity of the declensions.

In general it may be laid down for a maxim, that the more simple any

language is in its composition, the more complex it must be in its

declensions and its conjugations; and on the contrary, the more simple

it is in its declensions and its conjugations, the more complex it

must be in its composition.

The Greek seems to be, in a great measure, a simple, uncompounded

language, formed from the primitive jargon of those wandering savages,

the ancient Hellenians and Pelasgians, from whom the Greek nation is

said to have been descended. All the words in the Greek language are

derived from about three hundred primitives, a plain evidence that the

Greeks formed their language almost entirely among themselves, and

that when they had occasion for a new word, they were not accustomed,

as we are, to borrow it from some foreign language, but to form it,

either by composition or derivation, from some other word or words, in

their own. The declensions and conjugations, therefore, of the Greek

are much more complex than those of any other European language with

which I am acquainted.

The Latin is a composition of the Greek and of the ancient Tuscan

languages. Its declensions and conjugations accordingly are much less

complex than those of the Greek; it has dropped the dual number in

both. Its verbs have no optative mood distinguished by any peculiar

termination. They have but one future. They have no aorist distinct

from the preterit-perfect; they have no middle voice; and even many of

their tenses in the passive voice are eked out, in the same manner as

in the modern languages, by the help of the substantive verb joined to

{322} the passive participle. In both the voices, the number of

infinitives and participles is much smaller in the Latin than in the

Greek.

The French and Italian languages are each of them compounded, the one

of the Latin and the language of the ancient Franks, the other of the

same Latin and the language of the ancient Lombards. As they are both

of them, therefore, more complex in their composition than the Latin,

so are they likewise more simple in their declensions and

conjugations. With regard to their declensions, they have both of them

lost their cases altogether; and with regard to their conjugations,

they have both of them lost the whole of the passive, and some part of

the active voices of their verbs. The want of the passive voice they

supply entirely by the substantive verb joined to the passive

participle; and they make out part of the active, in the same manner,

by the help of the possessive verb and the same passive participle.

The English is compounded of the French and the ancient Saxon

languages. The French was introduced into Britain by the Norman

conquest, and continued, till the time of Edward III. to be the sole

language of the law as well as the principal language of the court.

The English, which came to be spoken afterwards, and which continues

to be spoken now, is a mixture of the ancient Saxon and this Norman

French. As the English language, therefore, is more complex in its

composition than either the French or the Italian, so is it likewise

more simple in its declensions and conjugations. Those two languages

retain, at least, a part of the distinction of genders, and their

adjectives vary their termination according as they are applied to a

masculine or to a feminine substantive. But there is no such

distinction in the English language, whose adjectives admit of no

variety of termination. The French and Italian languages have, both of

them, the remains of a conjugation; and all those tenses of the active

voice, which cannot be expressed by the possessive verb joined to the

passive participle, as well as many of those which can, are, in those

languages, marked by varying the termination of the principal verb.

But almost all those other tenses are in the English eked out by other

auxiliary verbs, so that there is in this language scarce even the

remains of a conjugation. _I love_, _I loved_, _loving_, are all the

varieties of termination which the greater part of the English verbs

admit of. All the different modifications of meaning, which cannot be

expressed by any of those three terminations, must be made out by

different auxiliary verbs joined to some one or other of them. Two

auxiliary verbs supply all the deficiencies of the French and Italian

conjugations; it requires more than half a dozen to supply those of

the English, which, besides the substantive and possessive verbs,

makes use of _do_, _did_; _will_, _would_; _shall_, _should_; _can_,

_could_; _may_, _might_.

It is in this manner that language becomes more simple in its

rudiments and principles, just in proportion as it grows more complex

in {323} its composition, and the same thing has happened in it, which

commonly happens with regard to mechanical engines. All machines are

generally, when first invented, extremely complex in their principles,

and there is often a particular principle of motion for every

particular movement which it is intended they should perform.

Succeeding improvers observe, that one principle may be so applied as

to produce several of those movements; and thus the machine becomes

gradually more and more simple, and produces its effects with fewer

wheels, and fewer principles of motion. In language, in the same

manner, every case of every noun, and every tense of every verb, was

originally expressed by a particular distinct word, which served for

this purpose and for no other. But succeeding observations discovered,

that one set of words was capable of supplying the place of all that

infinite number, and that four or five prepositions, and half a dozen

auxiliary verbs, were capable of answering the end of all the

declensions, and of all the conjugations in the ancient languages.

But this simplification of languages, though it arises, perhaps, from

similar causes, has by no means similar effects with the correspondent

simplification of machines. The simplification of machines renders

them more and more perfect, but this simplification of the rudiments

of languages renders them more and more imperfect, and less proper for

many of the purposes of language; and this for the following reasons.

First of all, languages are by this simplification rendered more

prolix, several words having become necessary to express what could

have been expressed by a single word before. Thus the words, _Dei_ and

_Deo_, in the Latin, sufficiently show, without any addition, what

relation the object signified is understood to stand in to the objects

expressed by the other words in the sentence. But to express the same

relation in English, and in all other modern languages, we must make

use of, at least, two words, and say, _of God_, _to God_. So far as

the declensions are concerned, therefore, the modern languages are

much more prolix than the ancient. The difference is still greater

with regard to the conjugations. What a Roman expressed by the single

word _amavissem_, an Englishman is obliged to express by four

different words, _I should have loved_. It is unnecessary to take any

pains to show how much this prolixness must enervate the eloquence of

all modern languages. How much the beauty of any expression depends

upon its conciseness, is well known to those who have any experience

in composition.

Secondly, this simplification of the principles of languages renders

them less agreeable to the ear. The variety of termination in the

Greek and Latin, occasioned by their declensions and conjugations,

gives a sweetness to their language altogether unknown to ours, and a

variety unknown to any other modern language. In point of sweetness,

the Italian, perhaps, may surpass the Latin, and almost equal the

Greek; but in point of variety, it is greatly inferior to both.

{324} Thirdly, this simplification, not only renders the sounds of our

language less agreeable to the ear, but it also restrains us from

disposing such sounds as we have, in the manner that might be most

agreeable. It ties down many words to a particular situation, though

they might often be placed in another with much more beauty. In the

Greek and Latin, though the adjective and substantive were separated

from one another, the correspondence of their terminations still

showed their mutual reference, and the separation did not necessarily

occasion any sort of confusion. Thus in the first line of Virgil,

Tityre tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi;

we easily see that _tu_ refers to _recubans_, and _patulæ_ to _fagi_;

though the related words are separated from one another by the

intervention of several others; because the terminations, showing the

correspondence of their cases, determine their mutual reference. But

if we were to translate this line literally into English, and say,

_Tityrus, thou of spreading reclining under the shade beech_, OEdipus

himself could not make sense of it; because there is here no

difference of termination, to determine which substantive each

adjective belongs to. It is the same case with regard to verbs. In

Latin the verb may often be placed, without any inconveniency or

ambiguity, in any part of the sentence. But in English its place is

almost always precisely determined. It must follow the subjective and

precede the objective member of the phrase in almost all cases. Thus

in Latin whether you say, _Joannem verberavit Robertas_, or _Robertas

verberavit Joannem_, the meaning is precisely the same, and the

termination fixes John to be the sufferer in both cases. But in

English _John beat Robert_, and _Robert beat John_, have by no means

the same signification. The place therefore of the three principal

members of the phrase is in the English, and for the same reason in

the French and Italian languages, almost always precisely determined;

whereas in the ancient languages a greater latitude is allowed, and

the place of those members is often, in a great measure, indifferent.

We must have recourse to Horace, in order to interpret some parts of

Milton's literal translation;

Who now enjoys thee credulous all gold,

Who always vacant, always amiable

Hopes thee; of flattering gales

Unmindful

are verses which it is impossible to interpret by any rules of our

language. There are no rules in our language, by which any man could

discover, that, in the first line, _credulous_ referred to _who_, and

not to _thee_; or that _all gold_ referred to any thing; or, that in

the fourth line, _unmindful_, referred to _who_, in the second, and

not to _thee_ in the third; or, on the contrary, that, in the second

line, _always vacant_, _always amiable_, referred to _thee_ in the

third, and not to _who_ in the same line with it. In the Latin,

indeed, all this is abundantly plain.

{325} Qui nunc te fruitur credulus aureâ,

Qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem

Sperat te; nescius auræ fallacis.

Because the terminations in the Latin determine the reference of each

adjective to its proper substantive, which it is impossible for any

thing in the English to do. How much this power of transposing the

order of their words must have facilitated the compositions of the

ancients, both in verse and prose, can hardly be imagined. That it

must greatly have facilitated their versification it is needless to

observe; and in prose, whatever beauty depends upon the arrangement

and construction of the several members of the period, must to them

have been acquirable with much more ease, and to much greater

perfection than it can be to those whose expression is constantly

confined by the prolixness, constraint, and monotony of modern

languages.

----------

THE PRINCIPLES

WHICH LEAD AND DIRECT

PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRIES;

AS ILLUSTRATED BY

THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY.

-----

WONDER, surprise, and admiration, are words which, though often

confounded, denote, in our language, sentiments that are indeed

allied, but that are in some respects different also, and distinct

from one another. What is new and singular, excites that sentiment

which, in strict propriety, is called Wonder; what is unexpected,

Surprise; and what is great or beautiful, Admiration.

We wonder at all extraordinary and uncommon objects, at all the rarer

phenomena of nature, at meteors, comets, eclipses, at singular plants

and animals, and at every thing, in short, with which we have before

been either little or not at all acquainted; and we still wonder,

though forewarned of what we are to see.

We are surprised at those things which we have seen often, but which

we least of all expected to meet with in the place where we find them;

we are surprised at the sudden appearance of a friend, whom we have

seen a thousand times, but whom we did not at all imagine we were to

see then.

We admire the beauty of a plain or the greatness of a mountain, {326}

though we have seen both often before, and though nothing appears to

us in either, but what we had expected with certainty to see.

Whether this criticism upon the precise meaning of these words be

just, is of little importance. I imagine it is just, though I

acknowledge, that the best writers in our language have not always

made use of them according to it. Milton, upon the appearance of

Death to Satan, says, that

The Fiend what this might be admir'd,

Admir'd, not fear'd.------

But if this criticism be just, the proper expression should have been

_wonder'd_. Dryden, upon the discovery of Iphigenia sleeping,

says that

The fool of nature stood with stupid eyes,

And gaping mouth, that testified surprise.

But what Cimon must have felt upon this occasion could not so much be

Surprise, as Wonder and Admiration. All that I contend for is, that

the sentiments excited by what is new, by what is unexpected, and by

what is great and beautiful are really different, however the words

made use of to express them may sometimes be confounded. Even the

admiration which is excited by beauty, is quite different (as will

appear more fully hereafter) from that which is inspired by greatness,

though we have but one word to denote them.

These sentiments, like all others when inspired by one and the same

object, mutually support and enliven one another: an object with which

we are quite familiar, and which we see every day, produces, though

both great and beautiful, but a small effect upon us; because our

admiration is not supported either by Wonder or by Surprise: and if we

have heard a very accurate description of a monster, our Wonder will

be the less when we see it; because our previous knowledge of it will

in a great measure prevent our Surprise.

It is the design of this essay to consider particularly the nature and

causes of each of these sentiments, whose influence is of far wider

extent than we should be apt upon a careless view to imagine. I shall

begin with Surprise.

-----

SEC. I.--_Of the Effect of Unexpectedness, or of Surprise._

WHEN an object of any kind, which has been for some time expected and

foreseen, presents itself, whatever be the emotion which it is by

nature fitted to excite, the mind must have been prepared for it, and

must even in some measure have conceived it before-hand; because the

idea of the object having been so long present to it, must have

before-hand excited some degree of the same emotion which the object

itself would excite: the change, therefore, which its presence

produces comes thus to be less considerable, and the emotion or

passion which it excites glides gradually and easily into the heart,

without violence, pain or difficulty.

{327} But the contrary of all this happens when the object is

unexpected; the passion is then poured in all at once upon the heart,

which is thrown, if it is a strong passion, into the most violent and

convulsive emotions, such as sometimes cause immediate death;

sometimes, by the suddenness of the ecstacy, so entirely disjoint the

whole frame of the imagination, that it never after returns to its

former tone and composure, but falls either into a frenzy or habitual

lunacy; and such as almost always occasion a momentary loss of reason,

or of that attention to other things which our situation or our duty

requires.

How much we dread the effects of the more violent passions, when they

come suddenly upon the mind, appears from those preparations which all

men think necessary when going to inform any one of what is capable of

exciting them. Who would choose all at once to inform his friend of an

extraordinary calamity that had befallen him, without taking care

before-hand, by alarming him with an uncertain fear, to announce, if

one may say so, his misfortune, and thereby prepare and dispose him

for receiving the tidings?

Those panic terrors which sometimes seize armies in the field, or

great cities, when an enemy is in the neighbourhood, and which deprive

for a time the most determined of all deliberate judgments, are never

excited but by the sudden apprehension of unexpected danger. Such

violent consternations, which at once confound whole multitudes,

benumb their understandings, and agitate their hearts, with all the

agony of extravagant fear, can never be produced by any foreseen

danger, how great soever. Fear, though naturally a very strong

passion, never rises to such excesses, unless exasperated both by

wonder, from the uncertain nature of the danger, and by surprise, from

the suddenness of the apprehension.

Surprise, therefore, is not to be regarded as an original emotion of a

species distinct from all others. The violent and sudden change

produced upon the mind, when an emotion of any kind is brought

suddenly upon it, constitutes the whole nature of Surprise.

But when not only a passion and a great passion comes all at once upon

the mind, but when it comes upon it while the mind is in the mood most

unfit for conceiving it, the Surprise is then the greatest. Surprises

of joy when the mind is sunk into grief, or of grief when it is elated

with joy, are therefore the most unsupportable. The change is in this

case the greatest possible. Not only a strong passion is conceived all

at once, but a strong passion the direct opposite of that which was

before in possession of the soul. When a load of sorrow comes down

upon the heart that is expanded and elated with gaiety and joy, it

seems not only to damp and oppress it, but almost to crush and bruise

it, as a real weight would crush and bruise the body. On the contrary,

when from an unexpected change of fortune, a tide of gladness seems,

if I may say so, to spring up all at once within it, when {328}

depressed and contracted with grief and sorrow, it feels as if

suddenly extended and heaved up with violent and irresistible force,

and is torn with pangs of all others most exquisite, and which almost

always occasion faintings, deliriums, and sometimes instant death. For

it may be worth while to observe, that though grief be a more violent

passion than joy, as indeed all uneasy sensations seem naturally more

pungent than the opposite agreeable ones, yet of the two, Surprises of

joy are still more insupportable than Surprises of grief. We are told

that after the battle of Thrasimenus, while a Roman lady, who had been

informed that her son was slain in the action, was sitting alone

bemoaning her misfortunes, the young man who escaped came suddenly

into the room to her, and that she cried out and expired instantly in

a transport of joy. Let us suppose the contrary of this to have

happened, and that in the midst of domestic festivity and mirth, he

had suddenly fallen down dead at her feet, is it likely that the

effects would have been equally violent? I imagine not. The heart

springs to joy with a sort of natural elasticity, it abandons itself

to so agreeable an emotion, as soon as the object is presented; it

seems to pant and leap forward to meet it, and the passion in its full

force takes at once entire and complete possession of the soul. But it

is otherwise with grief; the heart recoils from, and resists the first

approaches of that disagreeable passion, and it requires some time

before the melancholy object can produce its full effect. Grief comes

on slowly and gradually, nor ever rises at once to that height of

agony to which it is increased after a little time. But joy comes

rushing upon us all at once like a torrent. The change produced,

therefore, by a surprise of joy is more sudden, and upon that account

more violent and apt to have more fatal effects, than that which is

occasioned by a surprise of grief; there seems, too, to be something

in the nature of surprise, which makes it unite more easily with the

brisk and quick motion of joy, than with the slower and heavier

movement of grief. Most men who can take the trouble to recollect,

will find that they have heard of more people who died or became

distracted with sudden joy, than with sudden grief. Yet from the

nature of human affairs, the latter must be much more frequent than

the former. A man may break his leg, or lose his son, though he has

had no warning of either of these events, but he can hardly meet with

an extraordinary piece of good fortune, without having had some

foresight of what was to happen.

Not only grief and joy, but all the other passions, are more violent,

when opposite extremes succeed each other. Is any resentment so keen

as what follows the quarrels of lovers, or any love so passionate as

what attends their reconcilement?

Even the objects of the external senses affect us in a more lively

manner, when opposite extremes succeed to or are placed beside each

other. Moderate warmth seems intolerable heat if felt after extreme

{329} cold. What is bitter will seem more so when tasted after what is

very sweet; a dirty white will seem bright and pure when placed by a

jet black. The vivacity in short of every sensation, as well as of

every sentiment, seems to be greater or less in proportion to the

change made by the impression of either upon the situation of the mind

or organ; but this change must necessarily be the greatest when

opposite sentiments and sensations are contrasted, or succeed

immediately to one another. Both sentiments and sensations are then

the liveliest; and this superior vivacity proceeds from nothing but

their being brought upon the mind or organ when in a state most unfit

for conceiving them.

As the opposition of contrasted sentiments heightens their vivacity,

so the resemblance of those which immediately succeed each other

renders them more faint and languid. A parent who has lost several

children immediately after one another, will be less affected with the

death of the last than with that of the first, though the loss in

itself be, in this case, undoubtedly greater; but his mind being

already sunk into sorrow, the new misfortune seems to produce no other

effect than a continuance of the same melancholy, and is by no means

apt to occasion such transports of grief as are ordinarily excited by

the first calamity of the kind; he receives it, though with great

dejection, yet with some degree of calmness and composure, and without

anything of that anguish and agitation of mind which the novelty of

the misfortune is apt to occasion. Those who have been unfortunate

through the whole course of their lives are often indeed habitually

melancholy, and sometimes peevish and splenetic, yet upon any fresh

disappointment, though they are vexed and complain a little, they

seldom fly out into any more violent passion, and never fall into

those transports of rage or grief which often, upon like occasions,

distract the fortunate and successful.

Upon this are founded, in a great measure, some of the effects of

habit and custom. It is well known that custom deadens the vivacity of

both pain and pleasure, abates the grief we should feel for the one,

and weakens the joy we should derive from the other. The pain is

supported without agony, and the pleasure enjoyed without rapture:

because custom and the frequent repetition of any object comes at last

to form and bend the mind or organ to that habitual mood and

disposition which fits them to receive its impression, without

undergoing any very violent change.

-----

SEC. II.--_Of Wonder, or of the Effects of Novelty._

IT is evident that the mind takes pleasure in observing the

resemblances that are discoverable betwixt different objects. It is by

means of such observations that it endeavours to arrange and methodise

all its ideas, and to reduce them into proper classes and assortments.

Where it can observe but one single quality that is common to a great

{330} variety of otherwise widely different objects, that single

circumstance will be sufficient for it to connect them all together,

to reduce them to one common class, and to call them by one general

name. It is thus that all things endowed with a power of self-motion,

beasts, birds, fishes, insects, are classed under the general name of

Animal; and that these again, along with those which want that power,

are arranged under the still more general word, Substance: and this is

the origin of those assortments of objects and ideas which in the

schools are called Genera and Species, and of those abstract and

general names, which in all languages are made use of to express them.

The further we advance in knowledge and experience, the greater number

of divisions and subdivisions of those Genera and Species we are both

inclined and obliged to make. We observe a greater variety of

particularities amongst those things which have a gross resemblance;

and having made new divisions of them, according to those

newly-observed particularities, we are then no longer to be satisfied

with being able to refer an object to a remote genus, or very general

class of things, to many of which it has but a loose and imperfect

resemblance. A person, indeed, unacquainted with botany may expect to

satisfy your curiosity, by telling you, that such a vegetable is a

weed, or, perhaps in still more general terms, that it is a plant. But

a botanist will neither give nor accept of such an answer. He has

broke and divided that great class of objects into a number of

inferior assortments, accord to those varieties which his experience

has discovered among them; and he wants to refer each individual plant

to some tribe of vegetables, with all of which it may have a more

exact resemblance, than with many things comprehended under the

extensive genus of plants. A child imagines that it gives a

satisfactory answer when it tells you, that an object whose name it

knows not is a thing, and fancies that it informs you of something,

when it thus ascertains to which of the two most obvious and

comprehensive classes of objects a particular impression ought to be

referred; to the class of realities or solid substances which it calls

_things_, or to that of appearances which it calls _nothings_.

Whatever, in short, occurs to us we are fond of referring to some

species or class of things, with all of which it has a nearly exact

resemblance: and though we often know no more about them than about

it, yet we are apt to fancy that by being able to do so, we show

ourselves to be better acquainted with it, and to have a more thorough

insight into its nature. But when something quite new and singular is

presented, we feel ourselves incapable of doing this. The memory

cannot, from all its stores, cast up any image that nearly resembles

this strange appearance. If by some of its qualities it seems to

resemble, and to be connected with a species which we have before been

acquainted with, it is by others separated and detached from that, and

from all the {331} other assortments of things we have hitherto been

able to make. It stands alone and by itself in the imagination, and

refuses to be grouped or confounded with any set of objects whatever.

The imagination and memory exert themselves to no purpose, and in vain

look around all their classes of ideas in order to find one under

which it may be arranged. They fluctuate to no purpose from thought to

thought, and we remain still uncertain and undetermined where to place

it, or what to think of it. It is this fluctuation and vain

recollection, together with the emotion or movement of the spirits

that they excite, which constitute the sentiment properly called

_Wonder_, and which occasion that staring, and sometimes that

rolling of the eyes, that suspension of the breath, and that swelling

of the heart, which we may all observe, both in ourselves and others,

when wondering at some new object, and which are the natural symptoms

of uncertain and undetermined thought. What sort of a thing can that

be? What is that like? are the questions which, upon such an occasion,

we are all naturally disposed to ask. If we can recollect many such

objects which exactly resemble this new appearance, and which present

themselves to the imagination naturally, and as it were of their own

accord, our Wonder is entirely at an end. If we can recollect but a

few, and which it requires too some trouble to be able to call up, our

Wonder is indeed diminished, but not quite destroyed. If we can

recollect none, but are quite at a loss, it is the greatest possible.

With what curious attention does a naturalist examine a singular

plant, or a singular fossil, that is presented to him? He is at no

loss to refer it to the general genus of plants or fossils; but this

does not satisfy him, and when he considers all the different tribes

or species of either with which he has hitherto been acquainted, they

all, he thinks, refuse to admit the new object among them. It stands

alone in his imagination, and as it were detached from all the other

species of that genus to which it belongs. He labours, however, to

connect it with some one or other of them. Sometimes he thinks it may

be placed in this, and sometimes in that other assortment; nor is he

ever satisfied, till he has fallen upon one which, in most of its

qualities, it resembles. When he cannot do this, rather than it should

stand quite by itself, he will enlarge the precincts, if I may say so,

of some species, in order to make room for it; or he will create a new

species on purpose to receive it, and call it a Play of Nature, or

give it some other appellation, under which he arranges all the

oddities that he knows not what else to do with. But to some class or

other of known objects he must refer it, and betwixt it and them he

must find out some resemblance or ether, before he can get rid of that

Wonder, that uncertainty and anxious curiosity excited by its singular

appearance, and by its dissimilitude with all the objects he had

hitherto observed.

As single and individual objects thus excite our Wonder when, by {332}

their uncommon qualities and singular appearance, they make us

uncertain to what species of things we ought to refer them; so a

succession of objects which follow one another in an uncommon train or

order, will produce the same effect, though there be nothing

particular in any one of them taken by itself.

When one accustomed object appears after another, which it does not

usually follow, it first excites, by its unexpectedness, the sentiment

properly called Surprise, and afterwards, by the singularity of the

succession, or order of its appearance, the sentiment properly called

Wonder. We start and are surprised at seeing it there, and then wonder

how it came there. The motion of a small piece of iron along a plain

table is in itself no extraordinary object, yet the person who first

saw it begin, without any visible impulse, in consequence of the

motion of a loadstone at some little distance from it, could not

behold it without the most extreme Surprise; and when that momentary

emotion was over, he would still wonder how it came to be conjoined to

an event with which, according to the ordinary train of things, he

could have so little suspected it to have any connection.

When two objects, however unlike, have often been observed to follow

each other, and have constantly presented themselves to the senses in

that order, they come to be connected together in the fancy, that the

idea of the one seems, of its own accord, to call up and introduce

that of the other. If the objects are still observed to succeed each

other as before, this connection, or, as it has been called, this

association of their ideas, becomes stricter and stricter, and the

habit of the imagination to pass from the conception of the one to

that of the other, grows more and more rivetted and confirmed. As its

ideas move more rapidly than external objects, it is continually

running before them, and therefore anticipates, before it happens,

every event which falls out according to this ordinary course of

things. When objects succeed each other in the same train in which the

ideas of the imagination have thus been accustomed to move, and in

which, though not conducted by that chain of events presented to the

senses, they have acquired a tendency to go on of their own accord,

such objects appear all closely connected with one another, and the

thought glides easily along them, without effort and without

interruption. They fall in with the natural career of the imagination;

and as the ideas which represented such a train of things would seem

all mutually to introduce each other, every last thought to be called

up by the foregoing, and to call up the succeeding; so when the

objects themselves occur, every last event seems, in the same manner,

to be introduced by the foregoing, and to introduce the succeeding.

There is no break, no stop, no gap, no interval. The ideas excited by

so coherent a chain of things seem, as it were, to float through the

mind of their own accord, without obliging it to exert itself, or to

make any effort in order to pass from one of them to another.

{333} But if this customary connection be interrupted, if one or more

objects appear in an order quite different from that to which the

imagination has been accustomed, and for which it is prepared, the

contrary of all this happens. We are at first surprised by the

unexpectedness of the new appearance, and when that momentary emotion

is over, we still wonder how it came to occur in that place. The

imagination no longer feels the usual facility of passing from the

event which goes before to that which comes after. It is an order or

law of succession to which it has not been accustomed, and which it

therefore finds some difficulty in following, or in attending to. The

fancy is stopped and interrupted in that natural movement or career,

according to which it was proceeding. Those two events seem to stand

at a distance from each other; it endeavours to bring them together,

but they refuse to unite; and it feels, or imagines it feels,

something like a gap or interval betwixt them. It naturally hesitates,

and, as it were, pauses upon the brink of this interval; it endeavours

to find out something which may fill up the gap, which, like a bridge,

may so far at least unite those seemingly distant objects, as to

render the passage of the thought betwixt them smooth, and natural,

and easy. The supposition of a chain of intermediate, though

invisible, events, which succeed each other in a train similar to that

in which the imagination has been accustomed to move, and which links

together those two disjointed appearances, is the only means by which

the imagination can fill up this interval, is the only bridge which,

if one may say so, can smooth its passage from the one object to the

other. Thus, when we observe the motion of the iron, in consequence of

that of the loadstone, we gaze and hesitate, and feel a want of

connection betwixt two events which follow one another in so unusual a

train. But when, with Des Cartes, we imagine certain invisible

effluvia to circulate round one of them, and by their repeated

impulses to impel the other, both to move towards it, and to follow

its motion, we fill up the interval betwixt them, we join them

together by a sort of bridge, and thus take off that hesitation and

difficulty which the imagination felt in passing from the one to the

other. That the iron should move after the loadstone seems, upon this

hypothesis, in some measure according to the ordinary course of

things. Motion after impulse is an order of succession with which of

all things we are the most familiar. Two objects which are so

connected seem, to our mind, no longer to be disjointed, and the

imagination flows smoothly and easily along them.

Such is the nature of this second species of Wonder, which arises from

an unusual succession of things. The stop which is thereby given to

the career of the imagination, the difficulty which it finds in

passing along such disjointed objects, and the feeling of something

like a gap or interval betwixt them, constitute the whole essence of

this emotion. Upon the clear discovery of a connecting chain of

intermediate events, {334} it vanishes altogether. What obstructed the

movement of the imagination is then removed. Who wonders at the

machinery of the opera-house who has once been admitted behind the

scenes? In the wonders of nature, however, it rarely happens that we

can discover so clearly this connecting chain. With regard to a few

even of them, indeed, we seem to have been really admitted behind the

scenes, and our wonder accordingly is entirely at an end. Thus the

eclipses of the sun and moon, which once, more than all the other

appearances in the heavens, excited the terror and amazement of

mankind, seem now no longer to be wonderful, since the connecting

chain has been found out which joins them to the ordinary course of

things. Nay, in those cases in which we have been less successful,

even the vague hypothesis of Des Cartes, and the yet more indetermined

notions of Aristotle, have, with their followers, contributed to give

some coherence to the appearances of nature, and might diminish,

though they could not destroy, their wonder. If they did not

completely fill up the interval betwixt the two disjointed objects,

they bestowed upon them, however, some sort of loose connection which

they wanted before.

That the imagination feels a real difficulty in passing along two

events which follow one another in an uncommon order, may be confirmed

by many obvious observations. If it attempts to attend beyond a

certain time to a long series of this kind, the continual efforts it

is obliged to make, in order to pass from one object to another, and

thus follow the progress of the succession, soon fatigue it, and if

repeated too often, disorder and disjoint its whole frame. It is thus

that too severe an application to study sometimes brings on lunacy and

frenzy, in those especially who are somewhat advanced in life, but

whose imaginations, from being too late in applying, have not got

those habits which dispose them to follow easily the reasonings in the

abstract sciences. Every step of a demonstration, which to an old

practitioner is quite natural and easy, requires from them the most

intense application of thought.

Spurred on, however, either by ambition or by admiration for the

subject, they still continue till they become, first confused, then

giddy, and at last distracted. Could we conceive a person of the

soundest judgment, who had grown up to maturity, and whose imagination

had acquired those habits, and that mould, which the constitution of

things in this world necessarily impresses upon it, to be all at once

transported alive to some other planet, where nature was governed by

laws quite different from those which take place here; as he would be

continually obliged to attend to events, which must to him appear in

the highest degree jarring, irregular, and discordant, he would soon

feel the same confusion and giddiness begin to come upon him, which

would at last end in the same manner, in lunacy and distraction.

Neither, to produce this effect, is it necessary that the objects

should be either {335} great or interesting, or even uncommon, in

themselves. It is sufficient that they follow one another in an

uncommon order. Let any one attempt to look over even a game of cards,

and to attend particularly to every single stroke, and if he is

unacquainted with the nature and rules of the games; that is, with the

laws which regulate the succession of the cards; he will soon feel the

same confusion and giddiness begin to come upon him, which, were it to

be continued for days and months, would end in the same manner, in

lunacy and distraction. But if the mind be thus thrown into the most

violent disorder, when it attends to a long series of events which

follow one another in an uncommon train, it must feel some degree of

the same disorder, when it observes even a single event fall out in

this unusual manner: for the violent disorder can arise from nothing

but the too frequent repetition of this smaller uneasiness.

That it is the unusualness alone of the succession which occasions

this stop and interruption in the progress of the imagination as well

as the notion of an interval betwixt the two immediately succeeding

objects, to be filled up by some chain of intermediate events, is not

less evident. The same orders of succession, which to one set of men

seem quite according to the natural course of things, and such as

require no intermediate events to join them, shall to another appear

altogether incoherent and disjointed, unless some such events be

supposed: and this for no other reason, but because such orders of

succession are familiar to the one, and strange to the other. When we

enter the work-houses of the most common artizans; such as dyers,

brewers, distillers; we observe a number of appearances, which present

themselves in an order that seems to us very strange and wonderful.

Our thought cannot easily follow it, we feel an interval betwixt every

two of them, and require some chain of intermediate events, to fill it

up, and link them together. But the artizan himself, who has been for

many years familiar with the consequences of all the operations of his

art, feels no such interval. They fall in with what custom has made

the natural movement of his imagination: they no longer excite his

Wonder, and if he is not a genius superior to his profession, so as to

be capable of making the very easy reflection, that those things,

though familiar to him, may be strange to us, he will be **disposed

rather to laugh at, than sympathize with our Wonder. He cannot

conceive what occasion there is for any connecting events to unite

those appearances, which seem to him to succeed each other very

naturally. It is their nature, he tells us, to follow one another in

this order, and that accordingly they always do so. In the same manner

bread has, since the world begun been the common nourishment of the

human body, and men have so long seen it, every day, converted into

flesh and bones, substances in all respects so unlike it, that they

have seldom had the curiosity to inquire by what process of {336}

intermediate events this change is brought about. Because the passage

of the thought from the one object to the other is by custom become

quite smooth and easy, almost without the supposition of any such

process. Philosophers, indeed, who often look for a chain of invisible

objects to join together two events that occur in an order familiar to

all the world, have endeavoured to find out a chain of this kind

betwixt the two events I have just now mentioned; in the same manner

as they have endeavoured, by a like intermediate chain, to connect the

gravity, the elasticity, and even the cohesion of natural bodies, with

some of their other qualities. These, however, are all of them such

combinations of events as give no stop to the imaginations of the bulk

of mankind, as excite no Wonder, nor any apprehension that there is

wanting the strictest connection between them. But as in those sounds,

which to the greater part of men seem perfectly agreeable to measure

and harmony, the nicer ear of a musician will discover a want, both of

the most exact time, and of the most perfect coincidence; so the more

practised thought of a philosopher, who has spent his whole life in

the study of the connecting principles of nature, will often feel an

interval betwixt two objects, which, to more careless observers, seem

very strictly conjoined. By long attention to all the connections

which have ever been presented to his observation, by having often

compared them with one another, he has, like the musician, acquired,

if one may so, a nicer ear, and a more delicate feeling with regard to

things of this nature. And as to the one, that music seems dissonance

which falls short of the most perfect harmony; so to the other, those

events seem altogether separated and disjoined, which may fall short

of the strictest and most perfect connection.

Philosophy is the science of the connecting principles of nature.

Nature, after the largest experience that common observation can

acquire, seems to abound with events which appear solitary and

incoherent with all that go before them, which therefore disturb the

easy movement of the imagination; which makes its ideas succeed each

other, if one may say so, by irregular starts and sallies; and which

thus tend, in some measure, to introduce those confusions and

distractions we formerly mentioned. Philosophy, by representing the

invisible chains which bind together all these disjointed objects,

endeavours to introduce order into this chaos of jarring and

discordant appearances, to allay this tumult of the imagination, and

to restore it, when it surveys the great revolutions of the universe,

to that tone of tranquillity and composure, which is both most

agreeable in itself, and most suitable to its nature. Philosophy,

therefore, may be regarded as one of those arts which address

themselves to the imagination; and whose theory and history, upon that

account, fall properly within the circumference of our subject. Let us

endeavour to trace it, from its first origin, up to that summit of

perfection to which it is at present {337} supposed to have arrived,

and to which, indeed, it has equally been supposed to have arrived in

almost all former times. It is the most sublime of all the agreeable

arts, and its revolutions have been the greatest, the most frequent,

and the most distinguished of all those that have happened in the

literary world. Its history, therefore, must, upon all accounts, be

the most entertaining and the most instructive. Let us examine,

therefore, all the different systems of nature, which, in these

western parts of the world, the only parts of whose history we know

anything, have successively been adopted by the learned and ingenious;

and, without regarding their absurdity or probability, their agreement

or inconsistency with truth and reality, let us consider them only in

that particular point of view which belongs to our subject; and

content ourselves with inquiring how far each of them was fitted to

soothe the imagination, and to render the theatre of nature a more

coherent, and therefore a more magnificent spectacle, than otherwise

it would have appeared to be. According as they have failed or

succeeded in this, they have constantly failed or succeeded in gaining

reputation and renown to their authors; and this will be found to be

the clue that is most capable of conducting us through all the

labyrinths of philosophical history: for in the mean time, it will

serve to confirm what has gone before, and to throw light upon what is

to come after, that we observe, in general, that no system, how well

soever in other respects supported, has ever been able to gain any

general credit on the world, whose connecting principles were not such

as were familiar to all mankind. Why has the chemical philosophy in

all ages crept along in obscurity, and been so disregarded by the

generality of mankind, while other systems, less useful, and not more

agreeable to experience, have possessed universal admiration for whole

centuries together? The connecting principles of the chemical

philosophy are such as the generality of mankind know nothing about,

have rarely seen, and have never been acquainted with; and which to

them, therefore, are incapable of smoothing the passage of the

imagination betwixt any two seemingly disjointed objects. Salts,

sulphurs, and mercuries, acids and alkalis, are principles which can

smooth things to those only who live about the furnace; but whose most

common operations seem, to the bulk of mankind, as disjointed as any

two events which the chemists would connect together by them. Those

artists, however, naturally explained things to themselves by

principles that were familiar to themselves. As Aristotle observes,

that the early Pythagoreans, who first studied arithmetic, explained

all things by the properties of numbers; and Cicero tells us, that

Aristoxenus, the musician, found the nature of the soul to consist in

harmony. In the same manner, a learned physician lately gave a system

of moral philosophy upon the principles of his own art, in which

wisdom and virtue were the healthful state of the soul; the different

vices and follies, the different diseases {338} to which it was

subject; in which the causes and symptoms of those diseases were

ascertained; and, in the same medical strain, a proper method of cure

prescribed. In the same manner also, others have written parallels of

painting and poetry, of poetry and music, of music and architecture,

of beauty and virtue, of all the fine arts; systems which have

universally owed their origin to the lucubrations of those who were

acquainted with the one art, but ignorant of the other; who therefore

explained to themselves the phenomena, in that which was strange to

them, by those in that which was familiar; and with whom, upon that

account, the analogy, which in other writers gives occasion to a few

ingenious similitudes, became the great hinge upon which every thing

turned.

-----

SECT. III.--_Of the Origin of Philosophy._

MANKIND, in the first ages of society, before the establishment of

law, order, and security, have little curiosity to find out those

hidden chains of events which bind together the seemingly disjointed

appearances of nature. A savage, whose subsistence is precarious,

whose life is every day exposed to the rudest dangers, has no

inclination to amuse himself with searching out what, when discovered,

seems to serve no other purpose than to render the theatre of nature a

more connected spectacle to his imagination. Many of these smaller

incoherences, which in the course of things perplex philosophers,

entirely escape his attention. Those more magnificent irregularities,

whose grandeur he cannot overlook, call forth his amazement. Comets,

eclipses, thunder, lightning, and other meteors, by their greatness,

naturally overawe him, and he views them with a reverence that

approaches to fear. His inexperience and uncertainty with regard to

every thing about them, how they came, how they are to go, what went

before, what is to come after them, exasperate his sentiment into

terror and consternation. But our passions, as Father Malbranche

observes, all justify themselves; that is, suggest to us opinions

which justify them. As those appearances terrify him, therefore, he is

disposed to believe every thing about them which can render them still

more the objects of his terror. That they proceed from some

intelligent, though invisible causes, of whose vengeance and

displeasure they are either the signs or the effects, is the notion of

all others most capable of enhancing this passion, and is that,

therefore, which he is most apt to entertain. To this, too, that

cowardice and pusillanimity, so natural to man in his uncivilized

state, still more disposes him; unprotected by the laws of society,

exposed, defenceless, he feels his weakness upon all occasions; his

strength and security upon none.

But all the irregularities of nature are not of this awful or terrible

kind. Some of them are perfectly beautiful and agreeable. These, {339}

therefore, from the same impotence of mind, would be beheld with love

and complacency, and even with transports of gratitude; for whatever

is the cause of pleasure naturally excites our gratitude. A child

caresses the fruit that is agreeable to it, as it beats the stone that

hurts it. The notions of a savage are not very different. The ancient

Athenians, who solemnly punished the axe which had accidentally been

the cause of the death of a man, erected altars, and offered

sacrifices to the rainbow. Sentiments not unlike these, may sometimes,

upon such occasions, begin to be felt even in the breasts of the most

civilized, but are presently checked by the reflection, that the

things are not their proper objects. But a savage, whose notions are

guided altogether by wild nature and passion, waits for no other proof

that a thing is the proper object of any sentiment, than that it

excites it. The reverence and gratitude, with which some of the

appearances of nature inspire him, convince him that they are the

proper objects of reverence and gratitude, and therefore proceed from

some intelligent beings, who take pleasure in the expressions of those

sentiments. With him, therefore, every object of nature, which by its

beauty or greatness, its utility or hurtfulness, is considerable

enough to attract his attention, and whose operations are not

perfectly regular, is supposed to act by the direction of some

invisible and designing power. The sea is spread out into a calm, or

heaved into a storm, according to the good pleasure of Neptune. Does

the earth pour forth an exuberant harvest? It is owing to the

indulgence of Ceres. Does the vine yield a plentiful vintage? It flows

from the bounty of Bacchus. Do either refuse their presents? It is

ascribed to the displeasure of those offended deities. The tree which

now flourishes and now decays, is inhabited by a Dryad, upon whose

health or sickness its various appearances depend. The fountain, which

sometimes flows in a copious, and sometimes in a scanty stream, which

appears sometimes clear and limpid, and at other times muddy and

disturbed, is affected in all its changes by the Naiad who dwells

within it. Hence the origin of Polytheism, and of that vulgar

superstition which ascribes all the irregular events of nature to the

favour or displeasure of intelligent, though invisible beings, to

gods, demons, witches, genii, fairies. For it may be observed, that in

all polytheistic religions, among savages, as well as in the early

ages of heathen antiquity, it is the irregular events of nature only

that are ascribed to the agency and power of their gods. Fire burns,

and water refreshes; heavy bodies descend, and lighter substances fly

upwards, by the necessity of their own nature; nor was the invisible

hand of Jupiter ever apprehended to be employed in those matters. But

thunder and lightning, storms and sunshine, those more irregular

events, were ascribed to his favour, or his anger. Man, the only

designing power with which they were acquainted, never acts but either

to stop or to alter the course which natural events would take, if

left to themselves. {340} Those other intelligent beings, whom they

imagined, but knew not, were naturally supposed to act in the same

manner; not to employ themselves in supporting the ordinary course of

things, which went on of its own accord, but to stop, to thwart, and

to disturb it. And thus, in the first ages of the world, the lowest

and most pusillanimous superstition supplied the place of philosophy.

But when law has established order and security, and subsistence

ceases to be precarious, the curiosity of mankind is increased, and

their fears are diminished. The leisure which they then enjoy renders

them more attentive to the appearances of nature, more observant of

her smallest irregularities, and more desirous to know what is the

chain which links them together. That some such chain subsists betwixt

all her seemingly disjointed phenomena, they are necessarily led to

conceive; and that magnanimity and cheerfulness which all generous

natures acquire who are bred in civilized societies, where they have

so few occasions to feel their weakness, and so many to be conscious

of their strength and security, renders them less disposed to employ,

for this connecting chain, those invisible beings whom the fear and

ignorance of their rude forefathers had engendered. Those of liberal

fortunes, whose attention is not much occupied either with business or

with pleasure, can fill up the void of their imagination, which is

thus disengaged from the ordinary affairs of life, no other way than

by attending to that train of events which passes around them. While

the great objects of nature thus pass in review before them, many

things occur in an order to which they have not been accustomed. Their

imagination, which accompanies with ease and delight the regular

progress of nature, is stopped and embarrassed by those seeming

incoherences; they excite their wonder, and seem to require some chain

of intermediate events, which, by connecting them with something that

has gone before, may thus render the whole course of the universe

consistent and of a piece. Wonder, therefore, and not any expectation

of advantage from its discoveries, is the first principle which

prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy, of that science which

pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various

appearances of nature; and they pursue this study for its own sake, as

an original pleasure or good in itself, without regarding its tendency

to procure them the means of many other pleasures.

Greece, and the Greek colonies in Sicily, Italy, and the Lesser Asia,

were the first countries which, in these western parts of the world,

arrived at a state of civilized society. It was in them, therefore,

that the first philosophers, of whose doctrine we have any distinct

account, appeared. Law and order seem indeed to have been established

in the great monarchies of Asia and Egypt, long before they had any

footing in Greece: yet, after all that has been said concerning the

learning of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, whether there ever was in

those nations {341} any thing which deserved the name of science, or

whether that despotism which is more destructive of security and

leisure than anarchy itself, and which prevailed over all the East,

prevented the growth of Philosophy, is a question which, for want of

monuments, cannot be determined with any degree of precision.

The Greek colonies having been settled amid nations either altogether

barbarous, or altogether unwarlike, over whom, therefore, they soon

acquired a very great authority, seem, upon that account, to have

arrived at a considerable degree of empire and opulence before any

state in the parent country had surmounted that extreme poverty,

which, by leaving no room for any evident distinction of ranks, is

necessarily attended with the confusion and misrule which flows from a

want of all regular subordination. The Greek islands being secure from

the invasion of land armies, or from naval forces, which were in those

days but little known, seem, upon that account too, to have got before

the continent in all sorts of civility and improvement. The first

philosophers, therefore, as well as the first poets, seem all to have

been natives, either of their colonies, or of their islands. It was

from thence that Homer, Archilochus, Stesichorus, Simonides, Sappho,

Anacreon, derived their birth. Thales and Pythagoras, the founders of

the two earliest sects of philosophy, arose, the one in an Asiatic

colony, the other in an island; and neither of them established his

school in the mother country.

What was the particular system of either of those two philosophers, or

whether their doctrine was so methodized as to deserve the name of a

system, the imperfection, as well as the uncertainty of all the

traditions that have come down to us concerning them, make it

impossible to determine. The school of Pythagoras, however, seems to

have advanced further in the study of the connecting principles of

nature, than that of the Ionian philosopher. The accounts which are

given of Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, the

successors of Thales, represent the doctrines of those sages as full

of the most inextricable confusion. Something, however, that

approaches to a composed and orderly system, may be traced in what is

delivered down to us concerning the doctrine of Empedocles, of

Archytas, of Timæus, and of Ocellus the Lucanian, the most renowned

philosophers of the Italian school. The opinions of the two last

coincide pretty much; the one, with those of Plato; the other, with

those of Aristotle; nor do those of the two first seem to have been

very different, of whom the one was the author of the doctrine of the

Four Elements, the other the inventor of the Categories; who,

therefore, may be regarded as the founders, the one, of the ancient

Physics; the other, of the ancient Dialectic; and, how closely these

were connected will appear hereafter. It was in the school of

Socrates, however, from Plato and Aristotle, that Philosophy first

received that form, which introduced her, if one {342} may say so, to

the general acquaintance of the world. It is from them, therefore,

that we shall begin to give her history in any detail. Whatever was

valuable in the former systems, which was at all consistent with their

general principles, they seem to have consolidated into their own.

From the Ionian philosophy, I have not been able to discover that they

derived anything. From the Pythagorean school, both Plato and

Aristotle seem to have derived the fundamental principles of almost

all their doctrines. Plato, too, appears to have borrowed something

from two other sects of philosophers, whose extreme obscurity seems to

have prevented them from acquiring themselves any extensive

reputation; the one was that of Cratylus and Heraclitus; the other was

Xenophanes, Parmenides, Melissus, and Zeno. To pretend to rescue the

system of any of those ante-Socratic sages, from that oblivion which

at present covers them all, would be a vain and useless attempt. What

seems, however, to have been borrowed from them, shall sometimes be

marked as we go along.

There was still another school of philosophy, earlier than Plato, from

which, however, he was so far from borrowing any thing, that he seems

to have bent the whole force of his reason to discredit and expose its

principles. This was the philosophy of Leucippus, **Democritus, and

Protagoras, which accordingly seems to have submitted to his

eloquence, to have lain dormant, and to have been almost forgotten for

some generations, till it was afterwards more successfully revived by

Epicurus.

-----

SEC. IV.--_The History of Astronomy._

OF all the phenomena of nature, the celestial appearances are, by

their greatness and beauty, the most universal objects of the

curiosity of mankind. Those who surveyed the heavens with the most

careless attention, necessarily distinguished in them three different

sorts of objects; the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars. These last,

appearing always in the same situation, and at the same distance with

regard to one another, and seeming to revolve every day round the

earth in parallel circles, which widened gradually from the poles to

the equator, were naturally thought to have all the marks of being

fixed, like so many gems, in the concave side of the firmament, and of

being carried round by the diurnal revolutions of that solid body: for

the azure sky, in which the stars seem to float, was readily

apprehended, upon account of the uniformity of their apparent motions,

to be a solid body, the roof or outer wall of the universe, to whose

inside all those little sparkling objects were attached.

The Sun and Moon, often changing their distance and situation, in

regard to the other heavenly bodies, could not be apprehended to be

attached to the same sphere with them. They assigned, therefore, to

{343} each of them, a sphere of its own; that is, supposed each of

them to be attached to the concave side of a solid and transparent

body, by whose revolutions they were carried round the earth. There

was not, indeed, in this case, the same ground for the supposition of

such **a sphere as in that of the Fixed Stars; for neither the Sun nor

the Moon appear to keep always at the same distance with regard to any

one of the other heavenly bodies. But as the motion of the Stars had

been accounted for by an hypothesis of this kind, it rendered the

theory of the heavens more uniform, to account for that of the Sun and

Moon in the same manner. The sphere of the sun they placed above that

of the Moon; as the Moon was evidently seen in eclipses to pass

betwixt the Sun and the Earth. Each of them was supposed to revolve by

a motion of its own, and at the same time to be affected by the motion

of the Fixed Stars. Thus, the Sun was carried round from east to west

by the communicated movement of this outer sphere, which produced his

diurnal revolutions, and the vicissitudes of day and night; but at the

same time he had a motion of his own, contrary to this, from west to

east, which occasioned his annual revolution, and the continual

shifting of his place with regard to the Fixed Stars. This motion was

more easy, they thought, when carried on edgeways, and not in direct

opposition to the motion of the outer sphere, which occasioned the

inclination of the axis of the sphere of the Sun, to that of the

sphere of the Fixed Stars; this again produced the obliquity of the

ecliptic, and the consequent changes of the seasons. The moon, being

placed below the sphere of the Sun, had both a shorter course to

finish, and was less obstructed by the contrary movement of the sphere

of the Fixed Stars, from which she was farther removed. She finished

her period, therefore, in a shorter time, and required but a month,

instead of a year, to complete it.

The Stars, when more attentively surveyed, were some of them observed

to be less constant and uniform in their motions than the rest, and to

change their situations with regard to the other heavenly bodies;

moving generally eastward, yet appearing sometimes to stand still, and

sometimes even, to move westwards. These, to the number of five, were

distinguished by the name of Planets, or Wandering Stars, and marked

with the particular appellations of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and

Mercury. As, like the Sun and Moon, they seem to accompany the motion

of the Fixed Stars from east to west, but at the same time to have a

motion of their own, which is generally from west to east; they were

each of them, as well as those two great lamps of heaven, apprehended

to be attached to the inside of a solid concave and transparent

sphere, which had a revolution of its own, that was almost directly

contrary to the revolution of the outer heaven, but which, at the same

time, was hurried along by the superior violence and greater rapidity

of this last.

This is the system of concentric Spheres, the first regular system of

{344} Astronomy, which the world beheld, as it was taught in the

Italian school before Aristotle, and his two contemporary

philosophers, Eudoxus and Callippus, had given it all the perfection

which it is capable of receiving. Though rude and inartificial, it is

capable of connecting together, in the imagination, the grandest and

the most seemingly disjointed appearances in the heavens. The motions

of the most remarkable objects in the celestial regions, the Sun, the

Moon, the Fixed Stars, are sufficiently connected with one another by

this hypothesis. The eclipses of these two great luminaries are,

though not so easily calculated, as easily explained, upon this

ancient, as upon the modern system. When these early philosophers

explained to their disciples the very simple causes of those dreadful

phenomena, it was under the seal of the most sacred secrecy, that they

might avoid the fury of the people, and not incur the imputation of

impiety, when they thus took from the gods the direction of those

events, which were apprehended to be the most terrible tokens of their

impending vengeance. The obliquity of the ecliptic, the consequent

changes of the seasons, the vicissitudes of day and night, and the

different lengths of both days and nights in the different seasons,

correspond too, pretty exactly, with this ancient doctrine. And if

there had been no other bodies discoverable in the heavens, besides

the Sun, the Moon, and the Fixed Stars, this hypothesis might have

stood the examinations of all ages and gone down triumphant to the

remotest posterity.

If it gained the belief of mankind by its plausibility, it attracted

their wonder and admiration; sentiments that still more confirmed

their belief, by the novelty and beauty of that view of nature which

it presented to the imagination. Before this system was taught in the

world, the earth was regarded as, what it appears to the eye, a vast,

rough, and irregular plain, the basis and foundation of the universe,

surrounded on all sides by the ocean, and whose roots extended

themselves through the whole of that infinite depth which is below it.

The sky was considered as a solid hemisphere, which covered the earth,

and united with the ocean at the extremity of the horizon. The Sun,

the Moon, and all the heavenly bodies rose out of the eastern, climbed

up the convex side of the heavens, and descended again into the

western ocean, and from thence, by some subterraneous passages,

returned to their first chambers in the east. Nor was this notion

confined to the people, or to the poets who painted the opinions of

the people; it was held by Xenophanes, founder of the Eleatic

philosophy, after that of the Ionian and Italian schools, the earliest

that appeared in Greece. Thales of Miletus too, who, according to

Aristotle, represented the Earth as floating upon an immense ocean of

water, may have been nearly of the same opinion; notwithstanding what

we are told by Plutarch and Apuleius concerning his astronomical

discoveries, all of which must plainly have been of a much later date.

To those {345} who had no other idea of nature, besides what they

derived from so confused an account of things, how agreeable must that

system have appeared, which represented the Earth as distinguished

into land and water, self-balanced and suspended in the centre of the

universe, surrounded by the elements of Air and Ether, and covered by

eight polished and crystalline Spheres, each of which was

distinguished by one or more beautiful and luminous bodies, and all of

which revolved round their common centre, by varied, but by equable

and proportionable motions. It seems to have been the beauty of this

system that gave Plato the notion of something like an harmonic

proportion, to be discovered in the motions and distances of the

heavenly bodies; and which suggested to the earlier Pythagoreans, the

celebrated fancy of the Music of the Spheres; a wild and romantic

idea, yet such as does not ill correspond with that admiration, which

so beautiful a system, recommended too by the graces of novelty, is

apt to inspire.

Whatever are the defects which this account of things labours under,

they are such, as to the first observers of the heavens could not

readily occur. If all the motions of the Five Planets cannot, the

greater part of them may, be easily connected by it; they and all

their motions are the least remarkable objects in the heavens; the

greater part of mankind take no notice of them at all; and a system,

whose only defect lies in the account which it gives of them, cannot

thereby be much disgraced in their opinion. If some of the appearances

too of the Sun and Moon, the sometimes accelerated and again retarded

motions of those luminaries but ill correspond with it; these, too,

are such as cannot be discovered but by the most attentive

observation, and such as we cannot wonder that the imaginations of the

first enquirers should slur over, if one may say so, and take little

notice of.

It was, however, to remedy those defects, that Eudoxus, the friend and

auditor of Plato, found it necessary to increase the number of the

Celestial Spheres. Each Planet is sometimes observed to advance

forward in that eastern course which is peculiar to itself, sometimes

to retire backwards, and sometimes again to stand still. To suppose

that the sphere of the planet should by its own motion, if one may say

so, sometimes roll forwards, sometimes roll backwards, and sometimes

do neither the one nor the other, is contrary to all the natural

propensities of the imagination, which accompanies with ease and

delight any regular and orderly motion, but feels itself perpetually

stopped and interrupted, when it endeavours to attend to one so

desultory and uncertain. It would pursue, naturally and of its own

accord, the direct or progressive movement of the Sphere, but is every

now and then shocked, if one may say so, and turned violently out of

its natural career by the retrograde and stationary appearances of the

Planet, betwixt which and its more usual motion, the fancy feels a

want of connection, a gap or interval, which it cannot fill up, but by

supposing {346} some chain of intermediate events to join them. The

hypothesis of a number of other spheres revolving in the heavens,

besides those in which the luminous bodies themselves were infixed,

was the chain with which Eudoxus endeavoured to supply it. He bestowed

four of these Spheres upon each of the five Planets; one in which the

luminous body itself revolved, and three others above it. Each of

these had a regular and constant, but a peculiar movement of its own,

which it communicated to what was properly the Sphere of the Planet,

and thus occasioned that diversity of motions observable in those

bodies. One of these Spheres, for example, had an oscillatory motion,

like the circular pendulum of a watch. As when you turn round a watch,

like a Sphere upon its axis, the pendulum will, while turned round

along with it, still continue to oscillate, and communicate to

whatever body is comprehended within it, both its own oscillations and

the circular motion of the watch; so this oscillating Sphere, being

itself turned round by the motion of the Sphere above it, communicated

to the Sphere below it, that circular, as well as its own oscillatory

motions; produced by the one, the daily revolutions: by the other, the

direct, stationary, and retrograde appearances of the Planet, which

derived from a third Sphere that revolution by which it performed its

annual period. The motions of all these Spheres were in themselves

constant and equable, such as the imagination could easily attend to

and pursue, and which connected together that otherwise incoherent

diversity of movements observable in the Sphere of the Planet. The

motions of the Sun and Moon being more regular than those of the Five

Planets, by assigning three Spheres to each of them, Eudoxus imagined

he could connect together all the diversity of movements discoverable

in either. The motion of the Fixed Stars being perfectly regular, one

Sphere he judged sufficient for them all. So that, according to this

account, the whole number of Celestial Spheres amounted to

twenty-seven. Callippus, though somewhat younger, the contemporary of

Eudoxus, found that even this number was not enough to connect

together the vast variety of movements which he discovered in those

bodies, and therefore increased it to thirty-four. Aristotle, upon a

yet more attentive observation, found that even all these Spheres

would not be sufficient, and therefore added twenty-two more, which

increased their number to fifty-six. Later observers discovered still

new motions, and new inequalities, in the heavens. New Spheres were

therefore still to be added to the system, and some of them to be

placed even above that of the Fixed Stars. So that in the sixteenth

century, when Fracostorio, smit with the eloquence of Plato and

Aristotle, and with the regularity and harmony of their system, in

itself perfectly beautiful, though it corresponds but inaccurately

with the phenomena, endeavoured to revive this ancient Astronomy,

which had long given place to that of Ptolemy and Hipparchus, he found

it necessary to multiply {347} the number of Celestial Spheres to

seventy-two; neither were all these found to be enough.

This system had now become as intricate and complex as those

appearances themselves, which it had been invented to render uniform

and coherent. The imagination, therefore, found itself but little

relieved from that embarrassment, into which those appearances had

thrown it, by so perplexed an account of things. Another system, for

this reason, not long after the days of Aristotle, was invented by

Apollonius, which was afterwards perfected by Hipparchus, and has

since been delivered down to us by Ptolemy, the more artificial system

of Eccentric Spheres and Epicycles.

In this system, they first distinguished between the real and apparent

motion of the heavenly bodies. These, they observed, upon account of

their immense distance, must necessarily appear to revolve in circles

concentric with the globe of the Earth, and with one another: but that

we cannot, therefore, be certain that they really revolve in such

circles, since, though they did not, they would still have the same

appearance. By supposing, therefore, that the Sun and the other

Planets revolved in circles, whose centres were very distant from the

centre of the Earth; that consequently, in the progress of their

revolution, they must sometimes approach nearer, and sometimes recede

further from it, and must to its inhabitants appear to move faster in

the one case, and slower in the other, those philosophers imagined

they could account for the apparently unequal velocities of all those

bodies.

By supposing, that in the solidity of the Sphere of each of the Five

Planets there was formed another little Sphere, called an Epicycle,

which revolved round its own centre, at the same time that it was

carried round the centre of the Earth by the revolution of the great

Sphere, betwixt whose concave and convex sides it was inclosed; in the

same manner as we might suppose a little wheel inclosed within the

outer circle of a great wheel, and which whirled about several times

upon its own axis, while its centre was carried round the axis of the

great wheel, they imagined they could account for the retrograde and

stationary appearances of those most irregular objects in the heavens.

The Planet, they supposed, was attached to the circumference, and

whirled round the centre of this little Sphere, at the same time that

it was carried round the earth by the movement of the great Sphere.

The revolution of this little Sphere, or Epicycle, was such, that the

Planet, when in the upper part of it; that is, when furthest off and

least sensible to the eye; was carried round in the same direction

with the centre of the Epicycle, or with the Sphere in which the

Epicycle was inclosed: but when in the lower part, that is, when

nearest and most sensible to the eye; it was carried round a direction

contrary to that of the centre of the Epicycle: in the same manner as

every point in the upper part of the outer circle of a coach-wheel

revolves forward in the {348} same direction with the axis, while

every point, in the lower part, revolves backwards in a contrary

direction to the axis. The motions of the Planet, therefore, surveyed

from the Earth, appeared direct, when in the upper part of the

Epicycle, and retrograde, when in the lower. When again it either

descended from the upper part to the lower, or ascended from the lower

to the upper, it appeared stationary.

But, though, by the eccentricity of the great Sphere, they were thus

able, in some measure, to connect together the unequal velocities of

the heavenly bodies, and by the revolutions of the little Sphere, the

direct, stationary, and retrograde appearances of the Planets, there

was another difficulty that still remained. Neither the Moon, nor the

three superior Planets, appear always in the same part of the heavens,

when at their periods of most retarded motion, or when they are

supposed to be at the greatest distance from the Earth. The apogeum

therefore, or the point of greatest distance from the Earth, in the

Spheres of each of those bodies, must have a movement of its own,

which may carry it successively through all the different points of

the Ecliptic. They supposed, therefore, that while the great eccentric

Sphere revolved eastwards round its centre, that its centre too

revolved westwards in a circle of its own, round the centre of the

Earth, and thus carried its apogeum through all the different points

of the Ecliptic.

But with all those combined and perplexed circles; though the patrons

of this system were able to give some degree of uniformity to the real

directions of the Planets, they found it impossible so to adjust the

velocities of those supposed Spheres to the phenomena, as that the

revolution of any one of them, when surveyed from its own centre,

should appear perfectly equable and uniform. From that point, the only

point in which the velocity of what moves in a circle can be truly

judged of, they would still appear irregular and inconstant, and such

as tended to embarrass and confound the imagination. They invented,

therefore, for each of them, a new Circle, called the Equalizing

Circle, from whose centre they should all appear perfectly equable:

that is, they so adjusted the velocities of these Spheres, as that,

though the revolution of each of them would appear irregular when

surveyed from its own centre, there should, however, be a point

comprehended within its circumference, from whence its motions should

appear to cut off, in equal times, equal portions of the Circle, of

which that point was supposed to be the centre.

Nothing can more evidently show how much the repose and tranquillity

of the imagination is the ultimate end of philosophy, than the

invention of this Equalizing Circle. The motions of the heavenly

bodies had appeared inconstant and irregular, both in their velocities

and in their directions. They were such, therefore, as tended to

embarrass and confound the imagination, whenever it attempted to trace

them. The invention of Eccentric Spheres, of Epicycles, and of the

{349} revolution of the centres of the Eccentric Spheres, tended to

allay this confusion, to connect together those disjointed

appearances, and to introduce harmony and order into the mind's

conception of the movements of those bodies. It did this, however, but

imperfectly; it introduced uniformity and coherence into their real

directions. But their velocities, when surveyed from the only point in

which the velocity of what moves in a Circle can be truly judged of,

the centre of that Circle, still remained, in some measure, inconstant

as before; and still, therefore, embarrassed the imagination. The mind

found itself somewhat relieved from this embarrassment, when it

conceived, that how irregular soever the motions of each of those

Circles might appear, when surveyed from its own centre, there was,

however, in each of them, a point, from whence its revolution would

appear perfectly equable and uniform, and such as the imagination

could easily follow. Those philosophers transported themselves, in

fancy, to the centres of these imaginary Circles, and took pleasure in

surveying from thence, all those fantastical motions, arranged,

according to that harmony and order, which it had been the end of all

their researches to bestow upon them. Here, at last, they enjoyed that

tranquillity and repose which they had pursued through all the mazes

of this intricate hypothesis; and here they beheld this, the most

beautiful and magnificent part of the great theatre of nature, so

disposed and constructed, that they could attend, with delight, to all

the revolutions and changes that occurred in it.

These, the System of Concentric, and that of Eccentric Spheres, seem

to have been the two Systems of Astronomy, that had most credit and

reputation with that part of the ancient world, who applied themselves

particularly to the study of the heavens. Cleanthes, however, and the

other philosophers of the Stoical sect who came after him, appear to

have had a system of their own, quite different from either. But

though justly renowned for their skill in dialectic, and for the

security and sublimity of their moral doctrines, those sages seem

never to have had any high reputation for their knowledge of the

heavens; neither is the name of any one of them ever counted in the

catalogue of the great astronomers, and studious observers of the

Stars among the ancients. They rejected the doctrine of the Solid

Spheres; and maintained, that the celestial regions were filled with a

fluid ether, of too yielding a nature to carry along with it, by any

motion of its own, bodies so immensely great as the Sun, Moon, and

Five Planets. These, therefore, as well as the Fixed Stars, did not

derive their motion from the circumambient body, but had each of them,

in itself, and peculiar to itself, a vital principle of motion, which

directed it to move with its own peculiar velocity, and its own

peculiar direction. It was by this internal principle that the Fixed

Stars revolved directly from east to west in circles parallel to the

Equator, greater or less, according to their distance or nearness to

the Poles, and with velocities so proportioned, {350} that each of

them finished its diurnal period in the same time, in something less

than twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes. It was, by a principle

of the same kind, that the Sun moved westward, for they allowed of no

eastward motion in the heavens, but with less velocity than the Fixed

Stars, so as to finish his diurnal period in twenty-four hours, and,

consequently, to fall every day behind them, by a space of the heavens

nearly equal to that which he passes over in four minutes; that is,

nearly equal to a degree. This revolution of the Sun, too, was neither

directly westwards, nor exactly circular; but after the Summer

Solstice, his motion began gradually to decline a little southwards,

appearing in his meridian to-day, further south than yesterday; and

to-morrow still further south than to-day; and thus continuing every

day to describe a spiral line round the Earth, which carried him

gradually further and further southwards, till he arrived at the

Winter Solstice. Here this spiral line began to change its direction,

and to bring him gradually, every day, further and further northwards,

till it again restored him to the Summer Solstice. In the same manner

they accounted for the motion of the Moon, and that of the Five

Planets, by supposing that each of them revolved westwards, but with

directions and velocities, that were both different from one another,

and continually varying; generally, however, in spherical lines, and

somewhat inclined to the Equator.

This system seems never to have had the vogue. The system of

Concentric as well as that of Eccentric Spheres gives some sort of

reason, both for the constancy and equability of the motion of the

Fixed Stars, and for the variety and uncertainty of that of the

Planets. Each of them bestows some sort of coherence upon those

apparently disjointed phenomena. But this other system seems to leave

them pretty much as it found them. Ask a Stoic, why all the Fixed

Stars perform their daily revolutions in circles parallel to each

other, though of very different diameters, and with velocities so

proportioned that they all finish their period at the same time, and

through the whole course of it preserve the same distance and

situation with regard to one another? He can give no other answer, but

that the peculiar nature, or if one may say so, the caprice of each

Star directs it to move in that peculiar manner. His system affords

him no principle of connection, by which he can join together, in his

imagination, so great a number of harmonious revolutions. But either

of the other two systems, by the supposition of the solid firmament,

affords this easily. He is equally at a loss to connect together the

peculiarities that are observed in the motions of the other heavenly

bodies; the spiral motion of them all; their alternate progression

from north to south, and from south to north; the sometimes

accelerated, and again retarded motions of the Sun and Moon; the

direct retrograde and stationary appearances of the Planets. All these

have, in his system, {351} no bond of union, but remain as loose and

incoherent in the fancy, as they at first appeared to the senses,

before philosophy had attempted, by giving them a new arrangement, by

placing them at different distances, by assigning to each some

peculiar but regular principle of motion, to methodize and dispose

them into an order that should enable the imagination to pass as

smoothly, and with as little embarrassment, along them, as along the

most regular, most familiar, and most coherent appearances of nature.

Such were the systems of Astronomy that, in the ancient world, appear

to have been adopted by any considerable party. Of all of them, the

system of Eccentric Spheres was that which corresponded most exactly

with the appearances of the heavens. It was not invented till after

those appearances had been observed, with some accuracy, for more than

a century together; and it was not completely digested by Ptolemy till

the reign of Antoninus, after a much longer course of observations. We

cannot wonder, therefore, that it was adapted to a much greater number

of the phenomena, than either of the other two systems, which had been

formed before those phenomena were observed with any degree of

attention, which, therefore, could connect them together only while

they were thus regarded in the gross, but which, it could not be

expected, should apply to them when they came to be considered in the

detail. From the time of Hipparchus, therefore, this system seems to

have been pretty generally received by all those who attended

particularly to the study of the heavens. That astronomer first made a

catalogue of the Fixed Stars; calculated, for six hundred years, the

revolutions of the Sun, Moon, and Five Planets; marked the places in

the heavens, in which, during all that period, each of those bodies

should appear; ascertained the times of the eclipses of the Sun and

Moon, and the particular places of the Earth in which they should be

visible. His calculations were founded upon this system, and as the

events corresponded to his predictions, with a degree of accuracy

which, though inferior to what Astronomy has since arrived at, was

greatly superior to any thing which the world had then known, they

ascertained, to all astronomers and mathematicians, the preference of

his system, above all those which had been current before.

It was, however, to astronomers and mathematicians, only, that they

ascertained this; for, notwithstanding the evident superiority of this

system, to all those with which the world was then acquainted, it was

never adopted by one sect of philosophers.

Philosophers, long before the days of Hipparchus, seem to have

abandoned the study of nature, to employ themselves chiefly in

ethical, rhetorical, and dialectical questions. Each party of them

too, had by this time completed their peculiar system or theory of the

universe, and no human consideration could then have induced them to

give up any part of it. That supercilious and ignorant contempt too,

with {352} which at this time they regarded all mathematicians, among

whom they counted astronomers, seems even to have hindered them from

enquiring so far into their doctrines as to know what opinions they

held. Neither Cicero nor Seneca, who have so often occasion to mention

the ancient systems of Astronomy, takes any notice of that of

Hipparchus. His name is not to be found in the writings of Seneca. It

is mentioned but once in those of Cicero, in a letter to Atticus, but

without any note of approbation, as a geographer, and not as an

astronomer. Plutarch, when he counts up, in his second book,

concerning the opinions of philosophers, all the ancient systems of

Astronomy, never mentions this, the only tolerable one which was known

in his time. Those three authors, it seems, conversed only with the

writings of philosophers. The elder Pliny, indeed, a man whose

curiosity extended itself equally to every part of learning, describes

the system of Hipparchus, and never mentions its author, which he has

occasion to do often, without some note of that high admiration which

he had so justly conceived for his merit. Such profound ignorance in

those professed instructors of mankind, with regard to so important a

part of the learning of their own times, is so very remarkable, that I

thought it deserved to be taken notice of, even in this short account

of the revolutions of the philosophy of the ancients.

Systems in many respects resemble machines. A machine is a little

system, created to perform, as well as to connect together, in

reality, those different movements and effects which the artist has

occasion for. A system is an imaginary machine invented to connect

together in the fancy those different movements and effects which are

already in reality performed. The machines that are first invented to

perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and

succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with

fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the

same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the

same manner, are always the most complex, and a particular connecting

chain, or principle, is generally thought necessary to unite every two

seemingly disjointed appearances: but it often happens, that one great

connecting principle is afterwards found to be sufficient to bind

together all the discordant phenomena that occur in a whole species of

things. How many wheels are necessary to carry on the movements of

this imaginary machine, the system of Eccentric Spheres! The westward

diurnal revolution of the Firmament, whose rapidity carries all the

other heavenly bodies along with it, requires one. The periodical

eastward revolutions of the Sun, Moon, and Five Planets, require, for

each of those bodies, another. Their differently accelerated and

retarded motions require, that those wheels, or circles, should

neither be concentric with the Firmament, nor with one another; which,

more than any thing, seems to disturb the harmony of the universe. The

{353} retrograde and stationary appearance of the Five Planets, as

well as the extreme inconstancy of the Moon's motion, require, for

each of them, an Epicycle, another little wheel attached to the

circumference of the great wheel, which still more interrupts the

uniformity of the system. The motion of the apogeum of each of those

bodies requires, in each of them, still another wheel, to carry the

centres of their Eccentric Spheres round the centre of the Earth. And

thus, this imaginary machine, though, perhaps, more simple, and

certainly better adapted to the phenomena than the Fifty-six Planetary

Spheres of Aristotle, was still too intricate and complex for the

imagination to rest in it with complete tranquillity and satisfaction.

It maintained its authority, however, without any diminution of

reputation, as long as science was at all regarded in the ancient

world. After the reign of Antoninus, and, indeed, after the age of

Hipparchus, who lived almost three hundred years before Antoninus, the

great reputation which the earlier philosophers had acquired, so

imposed upon the imaginations of mankind, that they seem to have

despaired of ever equalling their renown. All human wisdom, they

supposed, was comprehended in the writings of those elder sages. To

abridge, to explain, and to comment upon them, and thus show

themselves, at least, capable of understanding some of their sublime

mysteries, became now the only road to reputation. Proclus and Theon

wrote commentaries upon the system of Ptolemy; but, to have attempted

to invent a new one, would then have been regarded, not only as

presumption, but as impiety to the memory of their so much revered

predecessors.

The ruin of the empire of the Romans, and, along with it, the

subversion of all law and order, which happened a few centuries

afterwards, produced the entire neglect of that study of the

connecting principles of nature, to which leisure and security can

alone give occasion. After the fall of those great conquerors and

civilizers of mankind, the empire of the Caliphs seems to have been

the first state under which the world enjoyed that degree of

tranquillity which the cultivation of the sciences requires. It was

under the protection of those generous and magnificent princes, that

the ancient philosophy and astronomy of the Greeks were restored and

established in the East; that tranquillity, which their mild, just,

and religious government diffused over their vast empire, revived the

curiosity of mankind, to inquire into the connecting principles of

nature. The **fame of the Greek and Roman learning, which was then

recent in the memories of men, made them desire to know, concerning

these abstruse subjects, what were the doctrines of the so much

renowned sages of those two nations.

They translated, therefore, into the Arabian language, and studied,

with great eagerness, the works of many Greek philosophers,

particularly of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Galen. The

superiority which they easily discovered in them, above the rude

essays which {354} their own nation had yet had time to produce, and

which were such, we may suppose, as arise every where in the first

infancy of science, necessarily determined them to embrace their

systems, particularly that of Astronomy: neither were they ever

afterwards able to throw off their authority. For, though the

munificence of the Abassides, the second race of the Caliphs, is said

to have supplied the Arabian astronomers with larger and better

instruments than any that were known to Ptolemy and Hipparchus, the

study of the sciences seems, in that mighty empire, to have been

either of too short, or too interrupted a continuance, to allow them

to make any considerable correction in the doctrines of those old

mathematicians. The imaginations of mankind had not yet got time to

grow so familiar with the ancient systems, as to regard them without

some degree of that astonishment which their grandeur and novelty

excited; a novelty of a peculiar kind, which had at once the grace of

what was new, and the authority of what was ancient. They were still,

therefore, too much enslaved to those systems, to dare to depart from

them, when those confusions which shook, and at last overturned the

peaceful throne of the Caliphs, banished the study of the sciences

from that empire. They had, however, before this, made some

considerable improvements: they had measured the obliquity of the

Ecliptic, with more accuracy than had been done before. The tables of

Ptolemy had, by the length of time, and by the inaccuracy of the

observations upon which they were founded, become altogether wide of

what was the real situation of the heavenly bodies, as he himself

indeed had foretold they would do. It became necessary, therefore, to

form new ones, which was accordingly executed by the orders of the

Caliph Almamon, under whom, too, was made the first mensuration of the

Earth that we know off, after the commencement of the Christian era,

by two Arabian astronomers, who, in the plain of Sennaar, measured two

degrees of its circumference.

The victorious arms of the Saracens carried into Spain the learning,

as well as the gallantry, of the East; and along with it, the tables

of Almamon, and the Arabian translations of Ptolemy and Aristotle; and

thus Europe received a second time, from Babylon, the rudiments of the

science of the heavens. The writings of Ptolemy were translated from

Arabic into Latin; and the Peripatetic philosophy was studied in

Averroes and Avicenna with as much eagerness and as much submission to

its doctrines in the West, as it had been in the East.

The doctrine of the Solid Spheres had, originally, been invented, in

order to give a physical account of the revolutions of the heavenly

bodies, according to the system of Concentric Circles, to which that

doctrine was very easily accommodated. Those mathematicians who

invented the doctrine of Eccentric Circles and Epicycles, contented

themselves with showing, how, by supposing the heavenly bodies to

revolve in such orbits, the phenomena might be connected together,

{355} and some sort of uniformity and coherence be bestowed upon their

real motions. The physical causes of those motions they left to the

consideration of the philosophers; though, as appears from some

passages of Ptolemy, they had some general apprehension, that they

were to be explained by a like hypothesis. But, though the system of

Hipparchus was adopted by all astronomers and mathematicians, it never

was received, as we have already observed, by any one sect of

philosophers among the ancients. No attempt, therefore, seems to have

been made amongst them, to accommodate to it any such hypothesis.

The schoolmen, who received, at once, from the Arabians, the

philosophy of Aristotle, and the astronomy of Hipparchus, were

necessarily obliged to reconcile them to one another, and to connect

together the revolutions of the Eccentric Circles and Epicycles of the

one, by the solid Spheres of the other. Many different attempts of

this kind were made by many different philosophers: but, of them all,

that of Purbach, in the fifteenth century, was the happiest and the

most esteemed. Though his hypothesis is the simplest of any of them,

it would be in vain to describe it without a scheme; neither is it

easily intelligible with one; for, if the system of Eccentric Circles

and Epicycles was before too perplexed and intricate for the

imagination to rest in it with complete tranquillity and satisfaction,

it became much more so, when this addition had been made to it. The

world, justly indeed, applauded the ingenuity of that philosopher, who

could unite, so happily, two such seemingly inconsistent systems. His

labours, however, seem rather to have increased than to have

diminished the causes of that dissatisfaction, which the learned soon

began to feel with the system of Ptolemy. He, as well as all those who

had worked upon the same plan before, by rendering this account of

things more complex, rendered it more embarrassing than it had been

before.

Neither was the complexness of this system the sole cause of the

dissatisfaction, which the world in general began, soon after the days

of Purbach, to express for it. The tables of Ptolemy having, upon

account of the inaccuracy of the observations on which they were

founded, become altogether wide of the real situation of the heavenly

bodies, those of Almamon, in the ninth century, were, upon the same

hypothesis, composed to correct their deviations. These again, a few

ages afterwards, became, for the same reason, equally useless. In the

thirteenth century, Alphonsus, the philosophical King of Castile,

found it necessary to give orders for the composition of those tables,

which bear his name. It is he, who is so well known for the whimsical

impiety of using to say, that, had he been consulted at the creation

of the universe, he could have given good advice; an apophthegm which

is supposed to have proceeded from his dislike to the intricate system

of Ptolemy. In the fifteenth century, the deviation of the Alphonsine

tables began to be as sensible, as those of Ptolemy and {356} Almamon

had been before. It appeared evident, therefore, that, though the

system of Ptolemy might, in the main, be true, certain corrections

were necessary to be made in it before it could be brought to

correspond with exact precision to the phenomena. For the revolution

of his Eccentric Circles and Epicycles, supposing them to exist, could

not, it was evident, be precisely such as he represented them; since

the revolutions of the heavenly bodies deviated, in a short time, so

widely from what the most exact calculations, that were founded upon

his hypothesis, represented them. It had plainly, therefore, become

necessary to correct, by more accurate observations, both the

velocities and directions of all the wheels and circles of which his

hypothesis is composed. This, accordingly, was begun by Purbach, and

carried on by Regiomontanus, the disciple, the continuator, and the

**perfecter of the system of Purbach; and one, whose untimely death,

amidst innumerable projects for the recovery of old, and the invention

and advancement of new sciences, is, even at this day, to be

regretted.

When you have convinced the world, that an established system ought to

be corrected, it is not very difficult to persuade them that it should

be destroyed. Not long, therefore, after the death of Regiomontanus,

Copernicus began to meditate a new system, which should connect

together the new appearances, in a more simple as well as a more

accurate manner, than that of Ptolemy.

The confusion, in which the old hypothesis represented the motions of

the heavenly bodies, was, he tells us, what first suggested to him the

design of forming a new system, that these, the noblest works of

nature, might no longer appear devoid of that harmony and proportion

which discover themselves in her meanest productions. What most of all

dissatisfied him, was the notion of the Equalizing Circle, which, by

representing the revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, as equable

only, when surveyed from a point that was different from their

centres, introduced a real inequality into their motions; contrary to

that most natural, and indeed fundamental idea, with which all the

authors of astronomical systems, Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle, even

Hipparchus and Ptolemy themselves, had hitherto set out, that the real

motions of such beautiful and divine objects must necessarily be

perfectly regular, and go on, in a manner, as agreeable to the

imagination, as the objects themselves are to the senses. He began to

consider, therefore, whether, by supposing the heavenly bodies to be

arranged in a different order from that in which Aristotle and

Hipparchus has placed them, this so much sought for uniformity might

not be bestowed upon their motions. To discover this arrangement, he

examined all the obscure traditions delivered down to us, concerning

every other hypothesis which the ancients had invented, for the same

purpose. He found, in Plutarch, that some old Pythagoreans had

represented the Earth as revolving in the centre of the universe, like

a wheel round its own axis; and that {357} others, of the same sect,

had removed it from the centre, and represented it as revolving in the

Ecliptic like a star round the central fire. By this central fire, he

supposed they meant the Sun; and though in this he was very widely

mistaken, it was, it seems, upon this interpretation, that he began to

consider how such an hypothesis might be made to correspond to the

appearances. The supposed authority of these old philosophers, if it

did not originally suggest to him his system, seems, at least, to have

confirmed him in an opinion, which, it is not improbable, that he had

beforehand other reasons for embracing, notwithstanding what he

himself would affirm to the contrary.

It then occurred to him, that, if the Earth was supposed to revolve

every day round its axis, from west to east, all the heavenly bodies

would appear to revolve, in a contrary direction, from east to west.

The diurnal revolution of the heavens, upon this hypothesis, might be

only apparent; the firmament, which has no other sensible motion,

might be perfectly at rest; while the Sun, the Moon, and the Five

Planets, might have no other movement beside that eastward revolution,

which is peculiar to themselves. That, by supposing the Earth to

revolve with the Planets, round the Sun, in an orbit, which

comprehended within it the orbits of Venus and Mercury, but was

comprehended within those of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, he could,

without the embarrassment of Epicycles, connect together the apparent

annual revolutions of the Sun, and the direct, retrograde, and

stationary appearances of the Planets: that while the Earth really

revolved round the Sun on one side of the heavens, the Sun would

appear to revolve round the Earth on the other; that while she really

advanced in her annual course, he would appear to advance eastward in

that movement which is peculiar to himself. That, by supposing the

axis of the Earth to be always parallel to itself, not to be quite

perpendicular, but somewhat inclined to the plane of her orbit, and

consequently to present to the Sun, the one pole when on the one side

of him, and the other when on the other, he would account for the

obliquity of the Ecliptic; the Sun's seemingly alternate progression

from north to south, and from south to north, the consequent change of

the seasons, and different lengths of the days and nights in the

different seasons.