( **5 ) 



DISCOURSE THE ELEVENTH. 



ON THE 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE ASIATICS. 



Deli vexed 2.0lh of February, 179 k 



BY THE PRESIDENT. 



T TAD it been of any importance, Gentlemen, to 

 ■*" arrange these Anniversary Dissertations accord- 

 ing to the ordinary progress of the human mind, in 

 the gradual expansion of its three most considerable 

 powers, memory r , imagination, and reason, I should cer- 

 tainly have presented you with an essay on the liberal 

 arts of the five Asiatic nations, before I produced my 

 remarks on their abstract sciences ; because, from my 

 own observation at least, it seems evident, that fancy 9 

 or the faculty of combining our ideas agreeably, by 

 various modes of imitation and substitution, is in 

 general earlier exercised, and sooner attains maturity 

 than the power of separating and comparing those 

 ideas by the laborious exertions of intellect ; and 

 hence, I believe, it has happened, that all nations in 

 the world had poets before they had mere philoso- 

 phers : but, as M. D'Alemkert has deliberately 

 placed science before art, as the question of prece- 



M 3 dencc 



