Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/77

* ENCYCLOPAEDIA. 61 ENCYCLOPEDIA. ably of a somewhat earlier date (though it contains quotations from Psellus which may be original), is the dictionary that bears the name of Suidas, about whom nothing is known. This is a lexicon, in general alpha- betically arranged; but it contains, besides defi- nitions of terms, a good deal of biographical, geographical, and historical information, thus suggesting an important characteristic of the modern encyclopaedia, and also foreshadowing the encyclopaedic dictionary of a very recent time. It is an uncritical compilation, but is still very im- portant as a source of information about the lit- eratures and languages of antiquity. A number of valuable critical editions of it have been issued. But the most important of all these early encyclo- paedias is the great Bibtiotheca Mundi, or Specu- lum Majus, or Speculum Triplex (as it is vari- ously entitled in the manuscripts) of Vincent of Beauvais, a Dominican friar of the thirteenth century. It is a product of indefatigable labor and vast erudition, and sums up the learning of its time. It consists of three parts: Speculum Tfaturale, iu thirty-two books, consisting of an account of the creation and the material world, under a great variety of topics; Speculum Doc- trinale, in seventeen books, comprising language (with a dictionary of considerable length), gram- mar, logic, rhetoric, theology, physics, etc.; and Speculum Historiale, in thirty-one books, consist- ing of a history of the world from the creation down, with a prophetic forecast of the future, which covers the end of the world (placed in a.d. 2370), the reign of Antichrist, the Last Judg- ment, and the renewal of all things. To these a fourth part, Speculum Morale, was added by an- other hand. The author entitled his work Specu- lum (mirror) because, as he said, it relleets everything in the visible and invisible worlds which is worthy of notice — as, indeed, it fairly does for its age. It is professedly a compilation from earlier literature, and is especially valuable for its references to authors. From this time on encyclopaedic works of this ancient, discur- sive and pedagogical character become more and more numerous, but only the following need be mentioned: Between 1260 and 1267 Brunetto Latini (1230 04), a native of Florence, wrote in French Li livrcs dou trcsor, a summary of the various departments of philosophy, in the wide sense then assigned to the word. It con- sists of three books, of which the first treats of the Creation, the history of the Old and New Testaments, primitive governments, natural sci- ence, and natural history; the second of morals, consisting mainly of translations from the Ethics of Aristotle and a popular work called the Moralities of the Philosophers ; and the third of instruction in rhetoric and of civil govern- ment as practiced in the Italian States of that period. This third book is particularly interest- ing, and the entire work is still valuable in many ways. It was printed in 1474. and several times reprinted. A critical edition of it. by a special commission, was designed by Napoleon I., but the plan was not carried out. In 1559 was pub- lished the Encyclopaedia sen Orbis Disciplinarum turn Sacrarum turn Profauarum of Paul Scalich — a survey of the entire circle of science, sacred and profane, notably as the first book to which the title 'encyclopaedia' was given. In 1630 appeared the Encyclopaedia Septem Tomis Distincta of Jo- hann Heinrich Alsted (1588-1038), in seven vol- umes (divided into thirty-five books), designed tn In' a methodical summary of all the science ami which, though falling far short of its aim, merited the high reputation which it long en- joyed. The second volume contains lists of Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, and Latin words defined in Latin. Lastly, the most extraordinary example of the ancient type is l.u science univet selle (1003) of -lean Magnon, an encyclopaedic poem designed to till ten volumes of 20.0110 lines each, but incomplete. All of the above-mentioned books, and many of their successors in the same class, were more or less unsystematic, or even chaotic, in form, and crude in substance. The problem of co- ordinating or systematizing all the branches of science, which they in some measure at least sought to answer, was, however, a legitimate one. and the attempt to solve it was frequently re- peated down to recent times. Bacon's (incom- plete) Instauratio Magna has been reckoned as the first of these attempts to be made with adequate method and upon genuine philosophical princi- ples. But that work can scared}' be described as encyclopaedic, even in this sense. More ob- viously within this class are numerous works. chiefly German, which appeared mainly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and which were, for the most part, written from the point of view of some particular philosophical system, especially the Wolffian, Kantian, and Hegelian. Such, for example, are Eschenburg's Lehrbtich der Wissenchaftskunde (1792) ; Krug's ^'ersuch eincr sys'tematischen Encyclopadic der Wissen- schaften (1796-98); Schmidt's AUgemeine En- ctjclopiidie uitd Methodologie der Wissenschaften (1810); Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's En- cyclopiidie der philosophischcn Wissenschaften (1817). The transition from this ancient type to the modern was due to a change in form which oc- curred about the middle of the seventeenth cen- tury, and which originated, doubtless, in the de- sire to make books of this kind more easy of consultation. This change, namely, was from the more or less logical arrangement of the material by subjects to its alphabetical arrangement by key-words, names, or special topics. In other words, the encyclopaedia was assimilated to the dictionary, and from that time on the word 'dictionary* (or 'lexicon') has been freely used as the title of encyclopaedic works. The change, moreover, was not confined to the form, for the alphabetical arrangement inevitably led to (if its adoption did not spring f rom ) a change in the purpose and character of encyclopaedic com- pilation — namely, that from the exposition of the system of human knowledge to the mechanical arrangement of its contents. The encyclopaedia became, in this line of its development, a work of reference in the strict sense of that word — a work for occasional use. in which any partic- ular topic or item of information desired can be found under the proper word in an alpha- betical vocabulary. This practical aim and this method — which, as was said above, were exempli- fied by the Lexicon of Suidas — have, however, been adopted by modern encyclopaedias in varying degrees. On the one hand there has been a ten- dency to approach more and more closely to the dictionary type by increasing the number and variety of the vocabulary words (topics), and correspondingly subdividing the material con-