Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 1 (1837).djvu/179

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''Introduction. General Considerations.—Division of these Researches into three Sections.''

HEN the human intellect began in Europe to emerge from the darkness and ignorance in which it had for many centuries been buried, its progress was everywhere the same, and the same method was adopted for the advancement of knowledge in all the sciences.

Before the invention of printing the ancients were the only sources of instruction; after the discovery of that art their works became more extensively circulated and better known, and as the necessary consequence of the abundance and the perfection of their labours, the admiration which they had excited was augmented, and increased effect was given to the ascendency they had acquired over the human mind. The only ambition of the learned was to understand, to arrange, and to comment upon the notions which they had transmitted to us. A treatise upon any branch whatever of human knowledge was merely a compilation, more or less complete and methodical, of what the ancients had written upon the subject: an addition was sometimes made of what the moderns had thought or observed on the same topics, but these supplements had not the same weight and authority as the rest of the work in the estimation of either the author or the reader. A remark or a proposition was judged of little value to which could not be added ut ait Aristoteles, ut ait Plinius, ut ait Hippocrates, or other similar phrases.

Happily for the progress of natural history, the great number of new productions brought into Europe from the countries recently discovered, at the end of the fifteenth and the commencement of the sixteenth centuries, soon rendered apparent the insufficiency of the works of the ancients with respect to this science.

It was perceived that the greater number of objects for the observation and description of which opportunity was afforded were unknown to them, and that they had very superficially observed and very