D'ALEMBERT. 423 



division of Natural Philosophy we find equal want of 

 precision. Can anything be more inexplicable than to 

 find a person, who like D'Alembert was both a mathe- 

 matician and a metaphysician, treating mathematics as 

 a branch of natural science, as if number, or indeed 

 quantity, could be regarded as a physical existence? 

 Not more happy is the execution of this plan in the 

 moral and intellectual division. These are ranged under 

 the science of Man. Then what place has the subject 

 of instinct, which is just as intellectual a branch as that 

 of reason ? Logic is defined to be the science of in- 

 tellect, or the means of finding truth ; Morals, that of 

 the will, or the grounds of virtue. But the Fancy is 

 as much a subject of intellectual science as the Keason. 

 Moreover the moral qualities belong to the understand- 

 ing. Under Logic he brings hieroglyphics and heraldry 

 ('La Science du Blason'), and also rhetoric, including 

 the art of versification ; but poetry belongs to the third 

 great division, Imagination, though oratory is ranged 

 under the second, with Logic. 



Thus of this celebrated classification and the famous 

 genealogical tree applied to it, the object of so much 

 self-gratulation with the Encyclopaedists, we may fairly 

 judge by its fruits, and they are of but mean value. 

 It shares the same blame, however, with the division 

 of Bacon, the root and seed from which it springs. We 

 find that great master of logic classifying the mechani- 

 cal arts and history together ; nay, in his threefold 

 division of the sciences, according as the Deity, man, 

 or external nature are their objects, he classes intellec- 

 tual and moral philosophy with anatomy and medicine, 

 optics and acoustics with ethics, the chemical qualities 

 of human bones and blood with human philosophy, that 

 of animal bones and blood with natural philosphy. So 

 D'Alembert not lagging behind his master in paradox, 

 affirms that imagination has the greatest share in meta- 

 physics and geometry of all the sciences connected 

 with reason. 



