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/79

Rh modern times, this influence of names is, comparatively speaking, at an end. The object of a public teacher is no longer to inculcate a particular system of dogmas, but to prepare his pupils for exercising their own judgments; to exhibit to them an outline of the different sciences, and to suggest subjects for their future examination. The few attempts to establish schools and to found sects, have all (after perhaps a temporary success) proved abortive. Their effect, too, during their short continuance, has been perfectly the reverse of that of the schools of antiquity; for whereas these were instrumental, on many occasions, in establishing and diffusing error in the world, the founders of our modern sects, by mixing up important truths with their own peculiar tenets, and by disguising them under the garb of a technical phraseology, have fostered such prejudices against themselves, as have blinded the public mind to all the lights they were able to communicate. Of this remark a melancholy illustration occurs (as M. Turgot long ago predicted) in the case of the French Economists; and many examples of a similar import might be produced from the history of science in our country; more particularly from the history of the various medical and metaphysical schools which successively rose and fell during the last century.

With the circumstances already suggested, as conspiring to accelerate the progress of knowledge, another has co-operated very extensively and powerfully; the rise of the lower orders in the different countries of Europe,—in consequence partly of the enlargement of commerce, and partly of the efforts of the Sovereigns to reduce the overgrown power of the feudal aristocracy.

Without this emancipation of the lower orders, and the gradual diffusion of wealth by which it was accompanied, the advantages derived from the invention of printing would have been extremely limited. A certain degree of ease and independence is essentially requisite to inspire men with the desire of knowledge, and to afford the leisure necessary

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