STUDY IX. 219 



may do them honour, their refults are by no 

 means fatisfadory. Their manner of reafoning 

 on Nature refembles that of a Savage, who, on 

 obferving, in one of our cities, the motion of 

 the indexes of a public clock, and feeing, that on 

 their pointing in a certain direftion upon the 

 hour-plate, the turrets fell a lliaking, crowds if- 

 fued into the flreets, and a confiderable part of the 

 inhabitants were put in motion, fliould thence 

 conclude, that a clock was the principle of all Eu- 

 ropean occupations. This is the defed to be im- 

 puted to moft of the Sciences, v/hich, without con- 

 fulting the end of the operations of Nature, per- 

 plex themfelves in an unprofitable inveftigation of 

 the means. The Aftronomer confiders only the 

 courfe of the Stars, without paying the flighteft 

 attention to the relations which they have with the 

 feafons. Chemiftry, having difcovered in the ag- 

 gregation of bodies only faline particles, which 

 mutually aflîmilate, fees nothing but fait as the 

 principle and the objed. Algebra having been 

 invented, in order to facilitate calculation, has de- 

 generated into a Science which calculates only 

 imaginary magnitudes, and which propofes to it- 

 felf theorems only, totally inapplicable to the de- 

 mands of human life. 



From all this refults an infinity of diforders, far 

 beyond what I am able to exprefs. The view of 



Nature, 



