PREFACE 



THE SECOND EDITION. 



AMONG the many erroneous views which 

 people take of the origin of the sciences, no one 

 appears more common than that of supposing 

 that they have all been originally undertaken 

 and pursued with some particular aim to public 

 or individual utility ; as if the investigation of 

 nature was not valuable; nor natural phaeno- 

 mena capable of exciting us to the pursuit of 

 their causes, on account of the pleasure they 

 produced in engaging the energies of our dif- 

 ferent intellectual faculties, independently of 

 any further purpose to which they might be 

 made subservient.' Some imagined object of 

 utility, for the attainment of which people con- 

 sider the different sciences as valuable, has ge- 

 nerally been supposed to be the cause which has 

 impelled mankind to follow them, as if from 

 feeling certain exigencies arising from time to 

 time out of the progressive civilization of so- 



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