INTRODUCTION. 

 Of Formal and Physical Astronomy. 



WE have thus rapidly traced the causes of the 

 almost complete blank which the history 

 of physical science offers, from the decline of the 

 Roman empire, for a thousand years. Along with 

 the breaking up of the ancient forms of society, 

 were broken up the ancient energy of thinking, the 

 clearness of idea, and steadiness of intellectual 

 action. This mental declension produced a servile 

 admiration for the genius of the better periods, and 

 thus, the spirit of Commentation: Christianity esta- 

 blished the claim of truth to govern the world; and 

 this principle, misinterpreted and combined with 

 the ignorance and servility of the times, gave rise 

 to the Dogmatic System : and the love of specula- 

 tion, finding no secure and permitted path on solid 

 ground, went off into the regions of Mysticism. 



The causes which produced the inertness and 

 blindness of the stationary period of human know- 

 ledge, began at last to yield to the influence of 

 the principles which tended to progression. The 

 indistinctness of thought, which was the original 

 feature in the decline of sound knowledge, was in 

 a measure remedied by the steady cultivation of 

 pure mathematics and astronomy, and by the pro- 



