240 ANIMALCULA Of INFUSI0N3» h 



in latter times. Did not your illuftrious coun- 

 tryman, Marfigli, imagine that the hiftory 

 of corals, corallines, and lithophytes, befides 

 many other produdions, taken from real plants^ 

 would one day be the hiftory of a very minute 

 animal ? This is a moft inftrudive fact to the 

 philofopher : it prefents the progrefs of the hu-* 

 man mind, in the fecret of Nature's truths. I re* 

 marked, page 393, To?n. i. de la Palingenejie ^ 

 ' One difcovery begets another. The intellec- 

 ' tual world, as well as the phyfical world, has 



* its generations, and neither are more real ge- 

 ^ nerations than the others. By attention, the 



* mind difcovers pre-exifling ideas, to ufe the ex* 

 '- preffion, in other ideas. By refledion, the pof- 



* fibility of a fad is deduced from another hO: 

 ' actually exifling ; and by experiment, the pof= 



* fibility is realifed. Thus when an acute perfon 

 ^ obtains a fad, he obtains the firft link of a 

 ' chain on which other links, alfo fads, depend.' 

 This is the generation of ideas, which Encyclo- 

 pedical Didionarifts ought to place before us, 

 but never do. It would require much more art 

 to explain fuch intelledual generations than 

 what is employed in compofing thefe huge com- 

 pilations. A good hiftoiy of the human mind 

 would be that of the generation of its ideas of 

 every kind ; and it would be the bafis of that 

 Hijioire de I'* Attention which 1 formerly prefent- 



ed, 



