HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 349 



In its latter character of an art philosophy arrived at a compara- 

 tively perfect state immeasurably sooner than it did in its more 

 noble one of a science. It is not difficult to account for this rapid 

 progress when we reflect that what is applied to practical purposes 

 displays its utility to all at the first view, and is eagerly followed by 

 some from the desire of profiting by the advantages to be derived 

 from it, by others from motives which are easily conceived, know- 

 ing as we do the more pressing necessity for action than for thought, 

 in addition to which every experiment is an advance in practical 

 philosophy, while we must collate the results of long experience be- 

 fore we can venture to lay down a theory, establish a fundamental 

 law, or attribute certain effects to the same invariable cause. 



We possess but few of those facts which, if recorded, might en- 

 lighten the darkness in which the first age of human reason is 

 shrouded, both on account of the great space of time intervening and 

 the nature of the circumstances enquired into. This poverty of in- 

 telligence left a wide field open for conjecture, and we have accord- 

 ingly a vast number of hypotheses, some of which are not only inge- 

 nious but highly probable. 



Plato and Aristotle taught that philosophoy owed its birth to ad- 

 miration. Others have assigned for its origin curiosity, the necessity 

 which our reason has for the exercise of its activity, the desire of 

 obtaining a uniform system. Adam Smith has given it to surprise 

 and the tendency of the human mind to account for phenomena, to re- 

 concile discrepancies, and to fill up the chasms which separate them. 

 All these theories are, to a certain extent, correct; for many causes 

 and circumstances must have combined to produce the effect in 

 question, and it is more than probable that each of these conjec- 

 tures is an approximation to the truth, or at least to a part of it. 



The intellectual man is curious to know the past and the future. He 

 craves after the explanation of all by which he is surrounded ; and 

 this he can only find by tracing every thing to its origin. He devotes 

 his whole energies to the discovery of first principles, that he may 

 trace ultimate effects to their final causes. 



Every thing in existence is constantly undergoing some change, 

 and such is the first idea presented to the speculative mind. It is not 

 yet prepared to receive the idea of a creation. From unformed but 

 pre-existent matter, in other words, chaos, it supposes all to have 

 originated by successive changes. The analogy there is among the 

 creeds of antiquity is a striking example of this tendency of the 

 human intellect. The Indians, the Chinese, the Chaldeans, the 

 Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Persians, all admitted similar doc- 

 trines. They were to be found also in ancient Greece and among 

 the Etrusci. According to Berosus the Chaldean, the universe at 

 first consisted of water, inhabited by every species of monster. This 

 darksome realm was divided by Belus into the heavens and the earth. 

 The latter he bedewed with the blood of an inferior deity, from which 

 arose man and the rest of the animal creation. In the heavens he 

 placed the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars. The Indian 

 traditions set forth that Vishnu, their supreme deity, at first lay in a 

 deep sleep in a lake of milk, alone with power and wisdom. After a 



