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Rh mind. Sir Joshua Reynolds has remarked, in one of his academical Discourses, that “every seminary of learning is surrounded with an atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may imbibe somewhat congenial to its own original conceptions.” He might have added, with still greater truth, that it is an atmosphere, of which it is more peculiarly salutary for those who have been elsewhere reared to breathe the air. The remark is applicable to higher pursuits than were in the contemplation of this philosophical artist; and it suggests a hint of no inconsiderable value for the education of youth.

The merits of Bacon, as the father of Experimental Philosophy, are so universally acknowledged, that it would be superfluous to touch upon them here. The lights which he has struck out in various branches of the Philosophy of Mind, have been much less attended to; although the whole scope and tenor of his speculations shew, that to this study his genius was far more strongly and happily turned, than to that of the Material World. It was not, as some seem to have imagined, by sagacious anticipations of particular discoveries afterwards to he made in physics, that his writings have had so powerful an influence in accelerating the advancement of that science. In the extent and accuracy of his physical knowledge, he was far inferior to many of his predecessors; but he surpassed them all in his knowledge of the laws, the resources, and the limits of the human understanding. The sanguine expectations with which he looked forwards to the future, were founded solely on his confidence in the untried capacities of the mind; and on a conviction of the possibility of invigorating and guiding, by means of logical rules, those faculties which, in all our researches after truth, are the organs or instruments to be employed. “Such rules,” as he himself has observed, “do in some sort equal men’s wits, and leave no great advantage or pre-eminence to the perfect and excellent motions of the spirit. To draw a straight line, or to describe a circle, by aim of hand only, there must be a great difference between an unsteady and unpractised hand, and a steady and practised; but to do it by rule or compass it is much alike.”

Nor is it merely as a logician that Bacon is entitled to notice on the present occasion. It would be difficult to name another writer prior to Locke, whose works are enriched with so many just observations on the intellectual phenomena. Among these, the most valuable relate to the laws of Memory, and of Imagination; the latter of which subjects he seems to have studied with peculiar care. In one short but beautiful paragraph concerning Poetry (under which title may be comprehended all the various creations of this faculty), he has exhausted every thing that philosophy and good sense have yet had to offer, on what has been since called the Beau Ideal; a topic, which has furnished occasion to so many

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