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Rh bits of thinking prevalent in his time. A curious example of this occurs in the same chapter which contains his excellent definition or description of universal grammar. “This too,” he observes, “is worthy of notice, that the ancient languages were full of declensions, of cases, of conjugations, of tenses, and of other similar inflections; while the modern, almost entirely destitute of these, indolently accomplish the same purpose by the help of prepositions, and of auxiliary verbs. Whence,” he continues, “may be inferred (however we may flatter ourselves with the idea of our own superiority), that the human intellect was much more acute and subtile in ancient, than it now is in modern times.” How very unlike is this last reflection to the usual strain of Bacon’s writings! It seems, indeed, much more congenial to the philosophy of Mr Harris and of Lord Monboddo; and it has accordingly been sanctioned with the approbation of both these learned authors. If my memory does not deceive me, it is the only passage in Bacon’s works, which Lord Monboddo has anywhere condescended to quote.

These observations afford me a convenient opportunity for remarking the progress and diffusion of the philosophical spirit, since the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the short passage just cited from Bacon, there are involved no less than two capital errors, which are now almost universally ranked, by men of education, among the grossest prejudices of the multitude. The one, that the declensions and conjugations of the ancient languages, and the modern substitution in their place, of prepositions and auxiliary verbs, are, both of them, the deliberate and systematical contrivances of speculative grammarians; the other (still less analogous to Bacon’s general style of reasoning), that the faculties of man have declined, as the world has grown older. Both of these errors may be now said to have disappeared entirely. The latter, more particularly, must, to the rising generation, seem so absurd, that it almost requires an apology to have mentioned it. That the capacities of the human mind have been in all ages the same; and that the diversity of phenomena exhibited by our species, is the result merely of the different circumstances in which men are placed, has been long received as an incontrovertible logical maxim; or rather, such is the influence of early instruction, that we are apt to regard it as one of the most obvious suggestions of common sense. And yet, till about the time of Montesquieu, it was by no means so generally recognized by the learned, as to have a sensible influence on the fashionable tone of thinking over Europe. The application of this fundamental and leading idea to the natural or theoretical history of society in all its vari-