6 INTRODUCTION. 



tlic following pages/ Let us beware, however, 

 of carrying the principle beyond due bounds. 



A difficulty also arises, in attempting to make 

 the proposed estimate, from the disposition of 

 man to magnify present objects. It is an old 

 remark, that important persons and scenes acquire 

 an additional masrnitude in our eves when seen 

 from a distance. But it is as true that the same 

 error of intellectual vision occurs daily with re- 

 spect to objects seen near at hand. Men have 

 always been unduly disposed to consider their 

 own times as distinguished, above all others, by 

 remarkable events. The virtue or the vice, the 

 knowledge or the ignorance, the discoveries or 

 the destructions, which we personally witness, or 

 of which we have recently heard, are apt to im- 

 press us more deeply, and to be estimated more 

 highly in the history of man, than their real im- 

 portance deserves. Hence nothing is more com- 

 mon than to hear men express an opinion, that the 

 country and the period in which their lot is cast are 

 more awfully degenerate, or more extensively en- 

 lightened, according to the occurrence, or the ob- 

 ject which happens to occupy their minds, than 

 the world ever before witnessed. No doubt a 

 portion of this prejudice and partiality cleaves to 

 every mind, and must always interpose an obstacle 

 in the way of him who would accurately calculate 

 the magnitude, and justly exhibit the features of 

 recent events. 



But, atter making every allowance for errors in 

 calculation which may arise from these several 



c Those who wish to see this subject farther elucidated, may consult a 

 very amusing work of M, Dutens, entitled OHgine des Decouvertes attri- 

 butes aux Modernes, life. 4to. published a number of years ago. And al- 

 though the impartial reader will frequently perceive that the author carries 

 his determination to withhold from the moderns the credit due them, for 

 many discoveries, to an extravagant and ridiculous length, yet the work 

 undoubtedly contains much instructive and valuable matter. 



