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/22

xiv ous circumstances requiring throughout a simultaneous attention. Besides always keeping in view the limits assigned to the work, it was necessary to attend to the comparative strength or weakness of the Encyclopædia in the several departments of knowledge which it embraces; to the comparative importance, novelty, and interest of the various topics presenting themselves for discussion; and to the modes of thinking, the prevailing subjects of speculation and inquiry, and the spirit of the times. There may be room enough to question the judgment and intelligence with which all this has been done; but the Editor hopes it will, at any rate, be allowed, that he has committed no great mistake, with respect to the nature of the duties and considerations by which it was proper for him to be guided in the adjustment of his plan; and he can only say, that he has used his best endeavours to regulate the work in compliance with what they seemed to him to require and prescribe. He will have occasion again to recur to them, in the following Outline of its contents; and he has the satisfaction of thinking, that even this Outline, but much more the examination of the work itself, will show, that it possesses claims to Public attention which cannot be impaired by any defects connected with his own responsibility. It will appear, that it has been composed by a numerous body of learned and ingenious men; most of them well known to the world; many of them ranking among the most illustrious ornaments of the Science and Literature of the present age. It will further appear, that it has been executed in a way calculated to render it extensively useful, independently of its connection with the work to which it is appended;—in a word, that it contains great and important additions to the stock of knowledge, in almost every department of Science and Learning,

In presenting an Outline of the contents of the work, it is not intended either to enumerate every article particularly worthy of notice, or to state fully the objects of those actually mentioned. Neither is it intended to mention the names of all its Contributors. All that is intended is, to give the reader a general view of the subjects and information which it embraces; and this the Editor shall attempt in a methodical form, but without aiming at an exact classification of all the subjects that may be noticed. In the Table at the end of the last volume, there will be found a complete enumeration, in alphabetical order, of Articles and Treatises; and in that annexed to this Pre-