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/140

86 an unquestionable fact; not that it necessarily follows from this, that, even in France, no previous effect had been produced by the labours of Boyle, of Newton, and of the other English experimentalists, trained in Bacon’s school. With respect to England, it is a fact not less certain, that at no period did the philosophy of Descartes produce such an impression on public opinion, either in Physics or in Ethics, as to give the slightest colour to the supposition, that it contributed, in the most distant degree, to the subsequent advances made by our countrymen in these sciences. In Logic and Metaphysics, indeed, the case was different. Here the writings of Descartes did much; and if they had been studied with proper attention, they might have done much more. But of this part of their merits, Condorcet seems to have had no idea. His eulogy, therefore, is rather misplaced than excessive. He has extolled Descartes as the father of Experimental Physics: He would have been nearer the truth, if he had pointed him out as the father of the Experimental Philosophy of the Human Mind.

In bestowing this title on Descartes, I am far from being inclined to compare him, in the number or importance of the facts which he has remarked concerning our intellectual powers, to various other writers of an earlier date. I allude merely to his clear and precise conception of that operation of the understanding (distinguished afterwards in Locke’s Essay by the name of Reflection), through the medium of which all our knowledge of Mind is exclusively to be obtained. Of the essential subserviency of this power to every satisfactory conclusion that can he formed with respect to the mental phenomena, and of the futility of every theory which would attempt to explain them by metaphors borrowed from the material world, no other philosopher prior to Locke seems to have been fully aware; and from the moment that these truths were recognized as logical principles in the study of mind, a new era commences in the history of that branch of science. It will be necessary, therefore, to allot to the illustration of this part of the Cartesian philosophy a larger space, than the limits of my undertaking will permit me to afford to the researches of some succeeding inquirers, who may, at first sight, appear more worthy of attention in the present times.

It has been repeatedly asserted by the Materialists of the last century, that Descartes was the first Metaphysician by whom the pure immateriality of the human soul was taught; and that the ancient philosophers, as well as the schoolmen, went no farther than to con-

1