Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/210

 ought to be observed, that they cannot be brought to any great Perfection, without Numbers of Tools, or Arts, which may be of the same Use as Tools, to make the Way plain to several Things, which otherwise, without their Help, would be inaccessible.

Of these Tools, or Instruments, some were anciently invented, and those Inventions were diligently pursued: Others are wholly new. According to their Uses, they may be ranged under these two General Heads: (1.) Those which are useful to all Parts of Learning, though perhaps not to all alike. (2.) Those which are particularly subservient to a Natural Philosopher, and a Mathematician. Under the first Head one may place Printing, and Engraving. Under the Latter come Telescopes, Microscopes, the Thermometer, the Baroscope, the Air-Pump, Pendulum-Clocks, Chymistry, and Anatomy. All these, but the two last, were absolutely unknown to former Ages. Chymistry was known to the Greeks, and from them carried to the ''Arabs. Anatomy is, at least, as old as Democritus and Hippocrates; and among the exact Epyptians'', something older.

The Use of Printing has been so vast, that every thing else wherein the Moderns