128 Remarks on Dr. Jtllnjield's Institutes 



those who have had the charge of editing subsequent edi- 

 tions to give it a thorough revisal, and to correct its errors. 

 Instead of this, they have been chiefly sohcitous to add to 

 its bulk ; and while they have given it a far more motley 

 and heterogeneous aspect than it originally possessed, by 

 forcing asunder the parts of the original to make room for 

 quotations from later authors, — quotations which seldom coa- 

 lesce, Mdiich sometimes repeat, and sometimes clash with 

 those parts of the original which are retained without alter- 

 ation, — they have extended rather than diminished the 

 amount of its inaccuracies. 



From this last remark we must except the edition which 

 has appeared the present year. It has been submitted to 

 the revisal of a gentleman well known as a mathematician 

 and an instructor ; and we are happy to notice that a large 

 number of the most palpable and embarrassing of the erro- 

 neous statements of former editions are rectified. 



But ahhough the present edition appears in a form con- 

 sidevably superior to either of its predecessors, we still re- 

 gard it as very far from possessing the character which is 

 demanded by the present state of learning in our country, 

 and the mode of instruction adopted in our colleges. With 

 the exception of the Electricity and Magnetism, and a few 

 particulars in the Astronomy, it is borrowed from sources 

 nearly a century old ; and hence presents scarcely any idea 

 of the progress made in the different branches of philosophy 

 since the period of Newton. In mentioning this as an im- 

 portant defect in the work, we would not be understood to 

 im])ly that the theoretical principles of philosophy were 

 studied with less success at that period than at present, or 

 that almost every elementary proposition which would now 

 find a place in a text-book for schools might not be found 

 in the sources from which Enfield borrowed his compila- 

 tion. So far as mere theoretical investigations are concern- 

 ed, the writers of the period to which we refer, afford an 

 ample fund of valuable materials to a compiler. But it 

 must be allowed that they pushed the application of mathe- 

 matical reasoning to physical inquiries to a faulty extreme. 

 They too seldom gave themselves the trouble to inquire 

 how far their ingenuity in forming deductions was leading 

 them astray from plain matters of fact, and how far they 

 Were building systems of principles for a world of material 



