Page:Collected Works of Dugald Stewart Volume 1.djvu/31

Rh chiefly indebted for its popularity, is the specious simplicity and comprehensiveness of the distribution itself—not the soundness of the logical views by which it was suggested. That all our intellectual pursuits may be referred to one or other of these three heads—History, Philosophy, and Poetry, may undoubtedly be said with considerable plausibility; the word history being understood to comprehend all our knowledge of particular facts and particular events; the word philosophy, all the general conclusions or laws inferred from these particulars by induction; and the word poetry, all the arts addressed to the imagination. Not that the enumeration, even with the help of this comment, can be considered as complete, for (to pass over entirely the other objections already stated) under which of these three heads shall we arrange the various branches of pure mathematics? Are we therefore to conclude, that the magnificent design conceived by Bacon, of enumerating, defining, and classifying the multifarious objects of human knowledge—(a design, on the successful accomplishment of which he himself believed that the advancement of the sciences essentially depended)—are we to conclude that this design was nothing more than the abortive offspring of a warm imagination, unsusceptible of any useful application to enlighten the mind, or to accelerate its progress? My own idea is widely different. The design was, in every respect, worthy of the sublime genius by which it was formed. Nor does it follow, because the execution was imperfect, that the attempt has been attended with no advantage. At the period when Bacon wrote, it was of much more consequence to exhibit to the learned a comprehensive sketch, than an accurate survey of the intellectual world; such a sketch as, by pointing out to those whose views had been hitherto confined within the limits of particular regions, the relative positions and bearings of their respective districts, as parts of one great whole, might invite them all, for the common benefit, to a reciprocal exchange of their local riches. The societies or academies which, soon after, sprung up in different countries of Europe, for the avowed purpose of contributing to the general mass of information, by the collection of insulated facts, conjectures, and