HISTORY OF EUROPE. [223 



iries, but with much more expedi- 

 tion. In the last century the ave- 

 rage period of a voyage to and from 

 the East Indies, even on this side the 

 Ganges, including the time neces- 

 sarily spent in the country, for lad- 

 ing and talcing on board stores, was 

 three years : at present, it is no 

 more than eighteen months. Voy- 

 ages have been frequently made 

 from Bombay, and Madras, to Fal- 

 mouth, in the space of three months 

 and a fortnight. 



The intercourse of minds, at first 

 merely verbal, was facilitated, im- 

 proved, and extended by the art of 

 writing, and still more, in later 

 times, by the art of printing ; and 

 collateral and subsequent improve- 

 ments, such as the establishment of 

 postsand packets, and we must now 

 add telegraphs. There was no pre- 

 ceding period when so great a por- 

 tion of the human race conversed 

 with one another, verbally or men- 

 tally, and with so much facility, as 

 in the years 1799 and 1800. 



There is a near connection be- 

 tween this extended intercourse and 

 collision of minds and the accele- 

 Tated progress of knowledge. It 

 sufficiently appears from history, li- 

 terary, natural, and civil, that all 

 useful arts, and all thehints that have 

 chiefly contributed to the promotion 

 of science, have been furnished more 

 from accident than design : not so 

 ^nuch from the innate vigour and 

 celestial fire of the soul, as from an 



accumulation of particular facts, ob- 

 truded by chance, at different times, 

 on different persons, by an inter- 

 change of ideas, a mutual supply of 

 mutual defects of information on 

 subjects of common investigation, 

 and the correction of mutual errors. 

 In times and regions, solitary and 

 sequestered, Hippocrates observed, 

 with truth, that art was long and 

 life short. In the age under review, 

 and particularly towards its conclu- 

 sion, the labourof art wasshortened 

 more than it had ever been, in anyfor- 

 mer period, by its own progression. 



The manner in which extended 

 intercourse accelerates the progress 

 of knowledge is two-fold : — it en- 

 larges the sphere of facts ; and, to 

 our own experience and observations 

 concerning those facts, it adds those 

 of others. — Amazing discoveries 

 were made in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, not only of islandsand natural 

 productions, but of mankind existing 

 in a state of society unknown be- 

 fore, and not even dreamt of.* 

 Now, as every fact and well-founded 

 conclusion is to be compared with 

 every fact, and every conclusion 

 already known and formed, our 

 knowledge is increased, not merely 

 as our knowledge of facts and classes 

 of facts increases, but in a much 

 higher, and, as it were, in geome- 

 trical proportion. 



The conversion of the specula- 

 tive and learned world, chiefly by 

 lord Bacon and Galileo,t from 



• Tbatpudor circa re fveiiereas, that particular kind of reserve and modesty, which 

 Lad been generally considered as peculiar to the human race, and which Grotius and 

 other philosophical theologians helieved to 'be traditionary, and a proof in favour of 

 the Cliristian religion, ivas found to have no manner of existence in Otaheite. 



+ In the times of these luminaries Uiere were many others, paiticularly in Italy, 

 who had hegun to seek knowledge, only by experiments, and induction from uniform 

 Tesults and observations. There was such a train of circumstances (among which 

 the blow that was given to the authority of the pope, or the triumph of faith over 

 rea^ion, was not the least) as must have led to the overthrow of the Aristotelian and 

 *rhola?tic, and prepared tJi« way for a sounder philosophy, had tliey been deiicknt. 



