INTRODUCTION. 



35 



middle of the eighteenth century, to carry out the plan, 

 foreshadowed in the ' Novum Organum,' of collecting all 

 knowledge, which had been accumulated ever since science 

 had been liberated from the fetters of theology, into one 

 comprehensive whole. It must, however, be admitted 

 that whilst the practical end of these laborious under- 

 takings, the diffusion of knowledge, has certainly been 

 greatly furthered, the original idea, that the sum of 

 human knowledge is an organic whole, has in the exe- 

 cution been by degrees entirely lost sight of. The unity 

 of thought and knowledge was indeed referred to in 

 Diderot's " Prospectus " and d'Alembert's " Discours pre- 

 liminaire," and in the introduction to Ersch and Gruber's 

 great Encyclopaedia, 1 as also in Coleridge's celebrated essay 



i. 



knowledge 



gradually 



Voila ce qui nous a determine h, 

 chercher dans les facultesprincipales 

 de 1'homme la division ge"nerale a 

 laquelle nous avons subordonne" 

 notre travail." Article "Encyclo- 

 pedic, 5 p. 641. 



1 Ersch und Gruber's 'Allgemeine 

 Encyclopiidie der Wissenschaften 

 und Kiinste,' Leipzig, 1818 to 1875, 

 unfinished, 151 vols. It was founded 

 by Professor Johann Samuel Ersch, 

 librarian at Halle in 1813, assisted 

 by Hufeland, Gruber, Meier, and 

 Brockhaus, and contained contri- 

 butions by the most learned and 

 minent Germans of the century. 

 It is interesting to compare the 

 plan and principles which guided 

 the editors, as expounded in the in- 

 troductions to the first and second 

 volumes, with the corresponding 

 dissertations prefixed to the ' Ency- 

 clopedic ' in France and the ' Ency- 

 clopaedia Metropolitana' in England. 

 The unity aimed at by Bacon was 

 either purely formal, securing only 

 uniformity and completeness of 

 ireatmen.t, or it was that of prac- 



tical usefulness the philosophy of 

 fruit and progress. The plan adopt- 

 ed by Diderot and d'Alembert could 

 hardly attain anything more than 

 this. Coleridge, nursed in German 

 philosophy, and deeply impressed 

 with the fact that there is a higher 

 view than that of Lord Bacon, and 

 that such is to be found rather in 

 writers like Plato and Shakespeare, 

 uses the word method in a much 

 wider sense. He was deeply affect- 

 ed by the spirit of the idealistic 

 philosophy, which was foreign to 

 Bacon and unduly despised by him. 

 In the idealistic systems of the 

 Continent, beginning with Kant, 

 the opinion was current that the 

 methods and treatment of science 

 alone were insufficient to close the 

 circle of knowledge. The truly 

 encyclopaedic view was only possible 

 in a scientific investigation speci- 

 ally carried on for that purpose, 

 and this was considered to be one 

 of the main objects of philosophy. 

 Thus Kant in many passages of his 

 works, notably vol. ii. pp. 377, 378, 



