the study of it did not commonly commence
till after that of philosophy, and when the
student had entered upon the study of theology.
Originally, the first rudiments, both of the
Greek and Latin languages, were taught in
universities; and in some universities they
still continue to be so. In others, it is expected
that the student should have previously
acquired, at least, the rudiments of one or
both of those languages, of which the study
continues to make everywhere a very considerable
part of university education.
The ancient Greek philosophy was divided
into three great branches; physics, or natural
philosophy; ethics, or moral philosophy; and
logic. This general division seems perfectly
agreeable to the nature of things.
The great phenomenon of nature, the revolutions
of the heavenly bodies, eclipses, comets;
thunder and lightning, and other extraordinary
meteors; the generation, the life,
growth, and dissolution of plants and animals;
are objects which, as they necessarily
excite the wonder, so they naturally call forth
the curiosity of mankind to inquire into their
causes. Superstition first attempted to satisfy
this curiosity, by referring all those
wonderful appearances to the immediate agency
of the gods. Philosophy afterwards
endeavoured to account for them from more
familiar causes, or from such as mankind
were better acquainted with, than the agency
of the gods. As those great phenomena are
the first objects of human curiosity, so the
science which pretends to explain them must
naturally have been the first branch of philosophy
that was cultivated. The first philosophers,
accordingly, of whom history has
preserved any account, appears to have been
natural philosophers.
In every age and country of the world,
men must have attended to the characters,
designs, and actions of one another; and
many reputable rules and maxims for the
conduct of human life must have been laid
down and approved of by common consent.
As soon as writing came into fashion, wise
men, or those who fancied themselves such,
would naturally endeavour to increase the
number of those established and respected
maxims, and to express their own sense of
what was either proper or improper conduct,
sometimes in the more artificial form of apologues,
like what are called the fables of
Æsop; and sometimes in the more simple
one of apophthegms or wise sayings, like the
proverbs of Solomon, the verses of Theognis
and Phocyllides, and some part of the works
of Hesiod. They might continue in this
manner, for a long time, merely to multiply
the number of those maxims of prudence and
morality, without even attempting to arrange
them in any very distinct or methodical order,
much less to connect them together by one or
more general principles, from which they
were all deducible, like effects from their natural
causes. The beauty of a systematical
arrangement of different observations, connected
by a few common principles, was first
seen in the rude essays of those ancient times
towards a system of natural philosophy.
Something of the same kind was afterwards
attempted in morals. The maxims of common
life were arranged in some methodical
order, and connected together by a few common
principles, in the same manner as they
had attempted to arrange and connect the
phenomena of nature. The science which
pretends to investigate and explain those connecting
principles, is what is properly called
Moral Philosophy.
Different authors gave different systems,
both of natural and moral philosophy. But
the arguments by which they supported those
different systems, far from being always demonstrations,
were frequently at best but
very slender probabilities, and sometimes
mere sophisms, which had no other foundation
but the inaccuracy and ambiguity of
common language. Speculative systems,
have, in all ages of the world, been adopted
for reasons too frivolous to have determined
the judgment of any man of common sense,
in a matter of the smallest pecuniary interest.
Gross sophistry has scarce ever had any influence
upon the opinions of mankind, except
in matters of philosophy and speculation;
and in these it has frequently had the
greatest. The patrons of each system of natural
and moral philosophy, naturally endeavoured
to expose the weakness of the arguments
adduced to support the systems which
were opposite to their own. In examining
those arguments, they were necessarily led to
consider the difference between a probable
and a demonstrative argument, between a
fallacious and a conclusive one; and logic,
or the science of the general principles of
good and bad reasoning, necessarily arose
out of the observations which a scrutiny of
this kind gave occasion to; though, in its origin,
posterior both to physics and to ethics, it
was commonly taught, not indeed in all, but
in the greater part of the ancient schools of
philosophy, previously to either of those
sciences. The student, it seems to have been
thought, ought to understand well the difference
between good and bad reasoning, before
he was led to reason upon subjects of so great
importance.
This ancient division of philosophy into
three parts was, in the greater part of the
universities of Europe, changed for another
into five.
In the ancient philosophy, whatever was
taught concerning the nature either of the
human mind or of the Deity, made a part of
the system of physics. Those beings, in
whatever their essence might be supposed to