216 
fophers ; and to attend to nothing but the 
furnaces and crucibles in our laboratories. 
A pleafant piece of abfurdity truly! to 
goto perftuade us, that Lord Bacon en- 
joined his difciples to make no ufe of their 
eyes, unlefs with a candie in their hands, 
or with fpectacles on their nofes | 
If I righly vaderftand the Reviewer's 
meaning in page 273; he wifhes to in- 
form us, that the method of analyfis and 
induction had not been applied to any fub- 
jects of invetiigation but fuch as are phy- 
fical and material, before the lateft fpecu- 
lations of Condorcet and Mr. Stewart, or 
not, at leaft, before the time of Mr. Hume. 
But, if he had looked into Lord Bacon’s 
TYreatife concerning the Advancement of 
Science, or had carefully perufed the No- 
eum Organum from beginning to end, or 
had confidered the Treatife on the Wifdom 
of the Ancients, or had examined the other 
worksof the author relating to fubjects pure- 
ly moral, literary, and intellectual, and had 
reflected, in particular, on the nature of 
that firft philofoply, the attainment to which 
was the great end of all the methods and 
enquiries which Bacon propofed ; he could 
not have avoided perceiving, that, to Me- 
taphyfics, whether regarded as the moft 
general and fundamental truths in the na- 
tural hittory of mind, or as that * axic- 
matical Science”? which Bacon termed the 
Firt Philofophy, his Lordfhyp bimfelf had 
actually applied with fuccels his method 
ef anmslyfis and induction; and that, im 
fact, his whole inftauration of the {ci- 
ences was to be completed in the perfection 
of metaphyfical truth. But the errour 
extends farsher. Any perfon who is even 
but tolerably acquainted with the trea- 
tifes of Cicero on Topics, and on Rheto- 
rical Invention, with the Inftitutes of Quin- 
tilian, or even with the Rhetoric of Arif- 
totle, cannot but know, that in /ubfance 
and iz fa, if not in the minutia of ex- 
terior appearance, the art prefcribed by 
the ancient rhetoricians, and commonly 
practifed by the Grek and Roman ora- 
ters for the invention of arguments in 
pleading any caufe, and then for bring. 
ing thofe arguments all to bear on the 
proper point of conviction or defence, was 
the very fame with the methed of analyfis 
and induction exemplified by Bacon in the 
five tables mentioned abeve. Any perfon 
that reads “* Xenophon’s Memoirs ef So- 
crates,’ a book that is put, in the com- 
mon courfe of education, into every fchool- 
boy’s hands, muit know, that almoft 
every one of Socratcs’s difcourfes is a 
beautiful example of the application of 
analyfis and induction to fubjects of invef- 
‘tigation purely moral and intellectual. In 
truth; no one general principle in meta- 
phyfics or the fcience of mind has ever 
Strigtures on Articles in the Edinburgh Review. [April 1, 
yet been afcertained otherwife than by 
analyfis and induction ; thefe have confi 
derably enlarged and improved that fcience 
fince Lord Bacon’s time; and hence is 
there juit reafon to expect, that they may 
advance it full farther. 
It is. affirmed, in this fame article, 
(page 274 of the Review), that ‘ all that 
obfervation could do, to determine the 
movements of the Heavenly Bodies, had 
been accomplifhea by the fargazers who 
preceded Sir Ifaac Newton!!!” By this 
it fhould feem to be the belief of the Re- 
viewer, that Dr. Halley, Dr. Bradley, 
Maupertuis, Dr. Herfchel, and fo many 
other aftronomers at home and abroad, ob- 
ferved no phenomena of the Heavens after 
Sir Ifaac Newton had publithed his Sytem 
which were of ufe to confirm it; that Sir 
Ffaac Newton himfelf did not confefs his 
fy{tem to reft in fome parts on mere analo- 
gies, and fay that it would be true in the 
whole, only if certain aftronomical events 
which he ventured to prediét, fhould come 
to pafs ; that all the altronomers who have 
furveyed the heavens fince Sir Ifaac News 
ton wrote, have made not an obfervation 
of ufe * to determine any movement of 
the heavenly bodies.’”—I thought that 
every fhepherd’s boy had known better. 
In the fame page it is gravely afferted, 
that “the law of gravitation, which Sir 
Ifaac Newton afterwards applied to the 
planetary fyftem, was firft calculated and 
afcertained by experiments performed up- 
on fubfiances which were entirely at his 
difpofal.” This, if it mean any thing to 
the writer’s purpofe, muft mean, that gra- 
vitation was afcertained to be a general 
law of the Univerfe, before the inveftiga- 
tion had been applied to any but bodies 
on the furface of the earth, In other 
words, the prepofition is, that the planets 
were known to Sir Ifaac Newton to gra- 
vitate towards the common centre of the 
fyffem in al] their movements, before he . 
had himfelf made the flighteft obfervation _ 
of their motions, or had received any tef- 
timony of the obfervations of others con- 
cerning them! : 
In page 324, of the fame Number, the 
Reviewer fays, that Karamfin ‘ does 
publifh in German.” In page 328, he 
fays, “© This bock (Karamfn’s Travels,) 
was originally written in German.” And 
throughout the réview of thefe travels 
much abufe is lavifhed on Mr. Karamfia 
becaufe he did publifh fuch things in the 
German language. Now, the faét is, that 
Mr. Karamfin wrote the Narrative of his 
Travels in the Ruffian language. It was. 
tranflated into German by Mr. John Rich- 
ter; and his Tranflation, publifhed by 
Hartknoch at Leipfic, in 1800, is now bes 
fore me! Your’s, &c. Reno. 
March 7, 1804. 
