352 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



This science would naturally dale its origin from the birth of ci- 

 vilization, as they are intimately allied. We shall find at its first rise 

 positive precepts and practical rules clothed in an allegorical dress, 

 to render them familiar and palatable to the ears of the uninformed 

 vulgar. Religious notions were disguised under the veil of mytho- 

 logy, and the maxims of morality were propagated in fables. The 

 limited state of human wisdom did not admit at this time of a definite 

 and distinct knowledge of the principles of disinterested duty or well- 

 regulated interest. 



We, nevertheless, meet with many rules of great generality scat- 

 tered here and there ; such as the celebrated maxim, " Do that to 

 others which you would have them do to you," and some definitions 

 which give promise of a more fortunate development. 



Common sense dictated the first rules of conduct. But the system 

 of emanation and the doctrines of mysticism introduced a new order 

 of ideas and precepts in ethics, whose essential object was to conduct 

 the soul to that degree of purity necessary for a commerce with the 

 source of all wisdom, in all the sublime relations attributed to it. 



The ideas of quantity and magnitude are the first which present 

 themselves to the speculative mind. They mark the most sensible, 

 the most universal, and the most constant relations. They govern space 

 and time. They measure motion. Their combinations are reproduced 

 under every form that invests matter. They precede these forms and 

 survive their existence. They compose the internal architecture of the 

 whole edifice of the creation. By the simplicity of the ideas con- 

 nected with them they much facilitate all attempts at generalization. 

 Lastly, by opening a boundless field, they offer a fitting aliment to 

 the unlimited activity of the mind. Hence the orign of mathematics. 



Men were led by their first'ideas of theology to regard the hea- 

 vens with an attentive eye as the seat of the deities, and of course 

 the phenomena of astronomy did not long escape their notice. These 

 phenomena have a fixed regularity and slow motion, which permits 

 a more careful investigation of their circumstances. In their general 

 character they are majestic and harmonious. In their details there 

 is a splendour which attracts the attention and delights the imagina- 

 tion. Their uniform symmetry and systematic arrangement readily 

 allow them to be referred to general and immutable laws. The 

 motions of the heavenly bodies are naturally associated with the ideas 

 of geometry and the operations of analysis. They involve their 

 purest arid most accurate applications. It is not therefore astonish- 

 ing that astronomy should have been the first physical science to 

 which the aid of mathematics^ was called, and that they should have 

 been cultivated in unison from the highest antiquity. The other 

 branches of science required more numerous and various observations 

 of facts on which to build their theories, which facts were not so rea- 

 dily distinguished or so easily reconciled. Hence their later birth 

 and slower progress. To give an instance, medical science, than 

 which no one of more practical utility exists, was long before it at- 

 tained any tolerable degree of perfection, though the motives for the 

 study of it were so imperative and the demand for its aid was so 

 universal. 



