422 D'ALEMBERT, 



opinion, and speaking with an unfeigned respect for 

 both its illustrious author and its eminent eulogists, 

 been praised much beyond its merits. The very ground 

 of those panegyrics, that it traces the invention of the 

 sciences and the arts to the necessities and the desires 

 of individual nature, seems to be a satisfactory proof 

 how fanciful and indeed how confined the whole plan 

 of the work is. Professor Stewart has most justly re- 

 marked (* Dissertation, Encyc. Brit. Introd.') that there 

 is in the Discourse a total confusion of two things, in 

 themselves wholly different and which ought to have 

 been carefully kept distinct the character and circum- 

 stances and progress of the individual, and those of the 

 rcies. It is the scientific advance of the race that 

 author professes to treat ; but he is constantly deal- 

 ing with the unfolding of the faculties in the man. 

 There arises from hence a most shadowy, indistinct, 

 and vague view of most points discussed. And not 

 unconnected with this confusion is the other main error 

 of the whole treatise, the error into which Bacon had 

 fallen before ; the sciences are classified under the heads 

 of memory, imagination, and reason, only Bacon's ar- 

 rangement revived. But nothing can be more fanciful, 

 nothing less accurate, than such a distribution, which 

 sacrifices sense to point, and sound principles of classi- 

 fication to outward symmetry and affected simplicity. 

 The total want of precision, and of logical arrangement 

 in the details of this division, is indeed striking. Thus 

 under History we have Natural History, or a record of 

 all facts, whether relating to animals, or vegetables, or 

 minerals, or the heavenly bodies, or the elements, as 

 to heat, air, water, meteors. Then in what does this 

 differ from inductive or experimental philosophy, which 

 yet forms a branch of the second great division ? More- 

 over, why are moral facts omitted in the division of 

 history? Then the application of natural powers to 

 different uses is another branch of History, and thus 

 all the arts are introduced under this head. In the 



