schools of Pythagoras and Plato, purity of manners, together with a sincere love of truth, and a diligent attention to it, were qualifications required of the disciples by their illustrious founders; for they rightly judged that the opposite character and temper were inconsistent with the study of true philosophy; with the cultivation of social habits; and with the practice of religion and virtue. Natural science, says the learned and ingenious Thompson, is an account of the events which take place in the material world. Every event, or what is the same thing, every change in bodies, indicates motion; for we cannot conceive of change, unless, at the same time, we suppose motion. Science, then, is in fact, an account of the different motions to which bodies are subjected in consequence of their mutual action on each other. These motions are divided into two kinds ;-the first comprehending all those natural events which are accompanied by sensible motions; the second, all those which are not The first of these branches accompanied by sensible motions. has long been known by the name of natural, and, of late, by the more proper appellation of mechanical philosophy; the second, by that of chemistry. Experimental philosophy is that, which proceeds on experiments, deducing the laws of nature and the properties and powers of bodies, and their action upon each other, from experiments and observations. The way of searching into nature, and discovering her laws by experiments and observations, was first proposed by the great Lord Bacon, and established by Sir Isaac Newton, Boyle, and the royal societies of London and Paris. To this, with a proper application of geometry is owing the advantage which the present system of philosophy possesses over every other, by which it has been preceded or opposed. Pursuing this method, we proceed with satisfaction and safety in the sudy of nature, in explaining her laws, in examining her construction, her various departments and appearances; and the result of the process is TRUTH-a noble reward, indeed, of our inquiries ;—a full, yet unsating satisfaction for our severest intellectual lucubrations and toils. ture. The manner of philosophizing among the ancients, was to ascribe to bodies certain arbitrary properties, such as best served their purpose, in accounting for the phenomena of naFrom this fertile source proceeded various founders of systems, and sects, every one of whom, assigned a different cause for the same appearance. The chief agreement observable among them consisted in this, that they conceived all bodies to be compositions of earth, air, fire, and water, or some one or more of them-to these they gave the name of principles or elements. Accurate chemists of our own times, as well as those of the two last centuries, have thrown their whole system to the ground, by proving their fundamental doctrine to be grossly erroneous. Their boasted elements are found to be compounds, and though they may be admitted as powerful agents of nature, they are far from being the primary constituent principles of the material world. 1 We have a very concise account of the four elements admitted by the most eminent ancient philosophers, in the 15th book of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The eternal world, they say, contains in it four bodies, productive of every thing that exists in it. Earth and water, being heavy, occupy the lowest place air and fire, being without weight, mount into the higher regions. Although these elements are separate, yet they combine in the composition of all substances, and these fall into them again, and are in due order of time regenerated; and thus they proceed in their regular courses in endless succession. To this decay and renovation of material objects, the following elegant lines of the philosophic Darwin may be applied without violence to their original allusion. Roll on ye stars! exult in youthful prime, Mark with bright curves the printless steps of time! Headlong-extinct, to one dark centre fall, Among the ancient philosophers we find a few of their most illustrious characters, who knew the value of experiments, and pursued the practice of them with care and assiduity. Plato, Democritus, Epicurus-but chiefly Aristotle, are to be mentioned as professors of science in the old school, who distinguished themselves by the ardor of their research, and the importance of their scientific labors. ROGER BACON is the first among the moderns, who appears to have indulged himself in the free and unshackled pursuit of truth. This amazing instance of genius and erudition, was an English monk of the Franciscan order. After a course of studies, both at Oxford and Paris, by which he enriched his mind with all the polemical and physical learning of his time, at the age of twenty-six, in the year 1240, he gave up all pretensions to ecclesiastical preferment, and devoted himself to his favourite study of experimental philoso phy. Possessed of extraordinary natural talents, and by their cultivation, having become a wonderful proficient in the arts and sciences, with which, at that period the rest of mankind were but little acquainted, he acquired the honors, which the liberal and wise were willing to pay to superior merit, and suffered the indignities which the ignorant. multitude were as ready to bestow on him for inculcating doctrines which they deemed sacrilegous, because they were too sublime for their comprehension. The envy of his illiterate brethren, occasioned him much temporary inconvenience; and as he chastised their ignorance and immorality, with the lash of satire, and the rod of indignation, they repaid his attacks with weapons, abundantly supplied them by the prejudice and superstition of the vulgar. At the age of 64, under pretence of having dealings with the devil, he was imprisoned, and deprived of all his canonical privileges. Still, however, a divine power triumphed over his evil genius; and he was furnished with means, though confined within the narrow limits of a dungeon, to enlarge the sphere of human knowledge beyond any dimensions ever contemplated by a preceding philosopher, and to light a torch at the altar of science, whose blaze yet continues to illumine the path of the student in his examination of nature, and search of truth. But, the honor of presiding over the illustrious band of experimental philosophers, is imperiously claimed by the immortal FRANCIS BACON, Lord Verulam, who is emphatically styled the prophet of the arts which Newton was afterwards to reveal; whose genius and works will be admired as long as the love of wisdom exists in the world. This great man, had he closed his literary career, with his desiderata for the perfection of the sciences, without contributing an article to supply a deficiency, would have been deemed worthy of immortality. Succeeding philosophers, directed towards objects of research, have acknowledged him the grand author of their investigations, and the parent of their fame. The ancients, although they made experiments, were ignorant of the proper use of them. It is here that they are so far transcended by the moderns; and for the art of applying the results of experiments, to the discovery and establishment of truth, Verulam is entitled to all our admiration and gratitude. The method of the ancients was to begin with the supposed causes of things, and thence, they argued to their phenomena and effects. This false manner of philosophizing, was successfully opposed by Lord Verulam. He accused Aristotle, in particular, of arguing in an unnatural way, in reversing the order of things. To remedy the defects of the common logic, he composed his great work, the new organ of sciences, in which he taught a new logic, the principles of which are now universally adopted in philosophical enquiries. To render natural philosophy truly fruitful, he proposed that two different modes of reasoning should be duly combined, which he called the scala ascensoria and descensoria; the former leading from experiments to general conclusions, the latter from general conclusions, to new discoveries. They were likewise called the analytic and synthetic modes of reasoning, so successfully followed afterwards by Newton and Boyle. The only certain method, says the great precursor of the true philosophy, is to proceed cautiously to advance step by step-reserving the most general principles for the last result of our inquiries. Hasty transitions from our first and slightest observations on things, to general axioms, are always dangerous, because, if we set out wrong, no diligence or art that we can use, while we follow so erroneous a course, will ever bring us to our desired end. And doubtless it cannot prove otherwise; for, in this spacious field of nature, if once we forsake the true path, we shall immediately lose ourselves, and must ever wander with uncertainty. Adopting the analytic and synthetic method of reasoning, philosophers, proceeding with caution, and engaged in careful examination of objects, endeavor to conduct their processes with all possible brevity and simplicity. The rejection of superfluous matter, of multiplied causes, of variety of hypotheses, is essentially requisite in our outset in quest of truth. Since the days of Bacon, the jargon of the schools of rival sectaries has been consigned with the errors of ancient doctrines to the dusty receptacles of literary virtuosi. Like the laws of the Medes and the Persians, they remain in the memory of the learned; but they have lost their power, and become mere dead letters, of no authority in the tribunal of science. After this brief and imperfect sketch of the services and benefits which the illustrious Bacon rendered the cause of philosophy, by rescuing her from the thraldom of prejudice and ignorance, and restoring her to her original dignity, who can read the history of his political life, as recorded by some authors of eminence, without a blush for the infirmity of human nature; or, if he impute their repre |