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xxii Though Education is copiously treated in the Encyclopædia, the subject has been resumed in this work, with a view to a philosophical investigation of the great objects at which Education ought to aim, and the means of attaining them; an inquiry ably prosecuted in Mr Mill’s article on that subject. The art of educating the Deaf and Dumb—one of the most pleasing results of this branch of philosophy, is fully explained in another article, written with his accustomed clearness and elegance, by Dr Roget.

Besides these articles, there is an examination of that new philosophy which pretends, not only to furnish an entirely original classification of our mental faculties and principles of action, but to point out certain external indications, in the bone of the head, of the state of energy and activity in which they exist. This is given, by the author just named, under the term Cranioscopy; a term which has been lately exchanged, by the disciples of this School, for that of Phrenology.

Political Philosophy has been hitherto but little attended to in the formation of Eneyclopædias. Various circumstances, however, have of late years conspired so much to exalt the importance and interest of the subjects about which it is conversant, that they could not now be neglected in a work professing to furnish a general digest of useful knowledge, without exposing it to the charge of defectiveness in a most essential department. These subjects seem, indeed, to have peculiar claims to attention in such publications; for the inquirer in this department is but too often left to such information as can be procured in mere occasional and party productions;—in works where it is seldom attempted, either to pursue a scientific mode of discussion, or to reduce the scattered elements of knowledge into a systematic form. Hence the propriety of political investigations, in works planned for the purpose of methodizing and diffusing useful knowledge; where, though prejudice and predilection cannot of course be excluded, all the general topics of political science are far more likely to be treated in a philosophical spirit and form, than in most of the other vehicles of political information.

The defects of the Encyclopædia Britannica in almost all the branches of this department, left ample room, and, as the present Editor thought, a strong call to supply what was wanting there, in this publication; and he hopes it will be found, in one at least, if not all of these branches, far more complete than any work of