Page:Collected Works of Dugald Stewart Volume 1.djvu/37

Rh of Matter, cannot fail to strike every ear as anomalously, and therefore illogically, applied, when extended to those of Thought and of Consciousness. Nor let it be imagined that these observations assume any particular theory about the nature or essence of Mind. Whether we adopt, on this point, the language of the Materialists, or that of their opponents, it is a proposition equally certain and equally indisputable, that the phenomena of Mind and those of Matter, as far as they come under the cognizance of our faculties, appear to be more completely heterogeneous than any other classes of facts within the circle of our knowledge; and that the sources of our information concerning them are in every respect so radically different, that nothing is more carefully to be avoided, in the study of either, than an attempt to assimilate them, by means of analogical or metaphorical terms, applied to both in common. In those inquiries, above all, where we have occasion to consider Matter and Mind as conspiring to produce the same joint effects, (in the constitution, for example, of our own compounded frame,) it becomes more peculiarly necessary to keep constantly in view the distinct province of each, and to remember, that the business of philosophy is not to resolve the phenomena of the one into those of the other, but merely to ascertain the general laws which regulate their mutual connexion. Matter and Mind, therefore, it should seem, are the two most general heads which ought to form the ground-work of an Encyclopedical classification of the sciences and arts. No branch of human knowledge, no work of human skill, can be mentioned, which does not obviously fall under the former head or the latter.

Agreeably to this twofold classification of the sciences and arts, it is proposed, in the following introductory Essays, to exhibit a rapid sketch of the progress made since the revival of letters—First, in those branches of knowledge which relate to mind; and, secondly, in those which relate to matter. D'Alembert, in his Preliminary Discourse, has boldly attempted to embrace both subjects in one magnificent design; and never, certainly, was there a single mind more equal to such an