Page:Supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica - with preliminary dissertations on the history of the sciences - illustrated by engravings (IA gri 33125011196181).pdf/12

iv In 1728, the Cyclopædia of Mr Chambers was given to the Public; and its appearance constitutes an era in the history of Encyclopedias; as exemplifying the first attempt that had yet been made at once to arrange Knowledge by the Alphabet, and to exhibit a view of its relations and dependencies. Mr Chambers sets out with stating, that his predecessors did not seem to have been aware, that “a Dictionary is, in some measure, capable of the advantages of a continued discourse;” and therefore, he adds, “we see nothing like a whole in what they have done.” In order to remedy this defect, and to unite the objects of an Encyclopædia with those of a Dictionary, he proposed to “consider the several matters, not only in themselves, but relatively, or as they respect each other; both to treat them as so many wholes, and as so many parts of some greater whole.” But he still followed the method of splitting the Sciences into parts, corresponding to the terms and topics in each which required elucidation; so that it was not by connected views of these great branches of knowledge, introduced under their general denominations, that he proposed to exhibit those “wholes” by which he was desirous that his Dictionary should be distinguished. He endeavoured to accomplish this, by references from the more general to the less general heads of science, and from these again to the former; conformably to an elaborate Scheme of the divisions and subdivisions of Knowledge prefixed to the work. That something was done, by this plan, to point out the links among connected subjects, disjoined by the Alphabet, and to make its fortuitous distributions subservient to continued inquiry, cannot be questioned; but the inconveniences and defects occasioned by the dismemberment of the Sciences, could not possibly be remedied by any chain of references however complete. The Sciences can only be studied with effect, by being viewed in their appropriate state of unity and coherency; and the term Encyclopædia cannot be applied, with propriety, to any work in which that method of considering them is not observed. Useful purposes may no doubt be served, by explaining the elements of a Science, in the order of the Alphabet; but it seems abundantly clear, that a work intended to include and to delineate the whole Circle of Knowledge, must fall greatly short of its professed object, if it fails to embody the truths of Science in a systematic form. In some other respects, Mr