, 
Notices respecting New Books. 145 
© This too,’ he observes, ‘ is worthy of notice, that the ancient 
‘languages were full of declensions, of cases, of conjugations, of 
tenses, and of other similar inflections; while the modern, al- 
most entirely destitute of these, indolently accomplish the same 
purpose by the help of prepositions, and of auxiliary verbs. 
€ Whence,’ he continues, ‘ may be inferred (however we may 
flatter ourselves with the idea of our own superiority), that the 
human intellect was much more acute and-subtile in ancient 
than it now is in modern times.’ How very unlike is this last 
reflection to the usual strain of Bacon’s writings! It seems, in- 
deed, much more congenial to the philosophy of Mr. Harris and 
of Lord Monboddo; and it has accordingly been sanctioned 
with the approbation of both these learned authors. If my 
memory does not deceive me, it is the only passage in Bacon’s 
works, which Lord Monboddo has anywhere condescended to 
quote. 
_ © These observations afford me a convenient opportunity for 
remarking the progress and diffusion of the philosophical spirit, 
since the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the short 
passagt just cited from Bacon; there are involved no less than 
two capital errors, which are now almost universally ranked, by 
men of education, among the grossest prejudices of the multi- 
tude. The one, that the declensions and conjugations of the 
ancient languages, and the modern substitution in their place 
of prepositious and auxiliary verbs, are, both of them, the deli- 
berate and systematical contrivances of speculative grammarians ; 
the other (still less analogous to Bacon’s general style of rea- 
soning), that the faculties of man have declined as the world 
has grown older. Both of these errors may he now said to have 
disappeared entirely. The latter, more particularly, must, to 
the rising generation, seem so absurd, that it almost requires an 
apology to have mentioned it. That the capacities of the hu- 
man mind have been in all ages the same 5 and that the diversity 
of phenomena exhibited by our species is the result merely of 
the different circumstances in-which men are. placed, has been 
long received as an incontrovertible logical maxim; or rather, 
such is the influence of early instruction, that we are apt to re- 
_ gard it as one of the most obvious suggestions of common sense. 
And yet, till about the time of Montesquieu, it was by no means 
_so generally recognised by the learned, as to have a sensible in- 
fluence on the fashionable tone of thinking over Europe. The 
application of this fundamental and leading idea to the natural 
or theoretical history of society in all its various aspects ;—to 
the history of languages, of the arts, of the sciences, of laws, of 
government, of manners, and of religion,—is the peculiar glory 
ef the latter half of the eighteenth century; and forms a cha- 
Vol, 47. No. 214, Fel. 1816. i racteristical 
