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different languages reflect on the characters and habits of those by whom they were respectively spoken . " Thus , " says he , " it is easy to perceive , that the Greeks were addicted to the
culture of the arts , the Romans engrossed with the conduct of affairs ; inasmuch , as the technical distinctions introduced in the progress of refinement require the aid of compounded words ; while the real business of life stands in no need of so artificial a phraseology . " * Ideas of this sort have , in the course of
a very few years , already become common , and almost tritical ; but how different was the case two centuries ago ! With these sound and enlarged views concerning the philosophy of the mind , it will not appear
surprising to those who have attended to the slow and irregular advances of human reason , that Bacon should occasionally blend incidental remarks , savouring of the habits of thinking prevalent in his time . A curious example of this occurs in the same
chapter which contains his excellent definition or description of universal grammar " This too , " he observes , " is worthy of notice , that the ancient languages were full of declensions , of cases , of conjugations , of tenses , and of other similar inflections : while the
modern , almost entirely destitute of these , indolently accomplish the same purpose by the help of prepositions , and of auxiliary verbs . Whence , " he continues , < € may be inferred (
however we may flatter ourselves with the idea of our own superiority ) , that the hnman intellect was much more acute and subtile in ancient , than it now is in modern times . " - (• How very unlike is this last reflection to the usual strain
of Bacon ' s writings ! It seems , indeed , much more congenial to the p hilosophy of Mr . Harris and of Lord Monboddo ; and it has accordingly been sanctioned with the approbation
of both these leltrned authors . If my memory does not deceive me , it is the only passage in Bacon ' s works , which Lord Monboddo has any where condescended to quote .
These observations afford me a convenient opportunity for remarking the progress and diffusion of the philosophical spirit , since the beginning
* JDe si-n& * Scicnt * Lib . * i . cap . i . t Ibid *
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of the seventeenth century . j n t L short passage just cited from Bacon * there are involved no less than two capital errors , which are now almost universally ranked , by men of educa *
tion , among the grossest prejudices of the multitude . The one , that the declensions and conjugations of the ancient languages , and the modern substitution in their place , of prepositions and auxiliary verbs , are , both of them , the deliberate and systematical contrivances of speculative grammarians ; the other ( still lebs analogous
to Bacoa ' s general style of reasoning ) , that the faculties of man have declined , as thtj world has grown older . Both of these errors may be now said to have disappeared entirely . The latter , more p articularly , must , to the
rising generation , seem so absurd , that it almost requires an apology to have mentioned it . That the capacities of the human mind have been in all ages the same ; and that the diversity of phenomena exhibited by our species , is the result merely of the different circumstances in which men
are placed , has been long received as an incontrovertible logical maxim ; or rather , such is the influence of early instruction , that we are apt to regard it as one of the most obvious
sikngestions of common sense . And yet , till about the time of Montesquieu , it was by no means so generally recognized by the learned , as to have a sensible influence on the fashionable
tone of thinking over Europe . The application of tnis fundamental and leading idea to the natural or theoretical history of society in all its various aspects ;—to the history of languages ,
of the arts , of the sciences , of laws , of government , of manners , and of religion , —is the peculiar glory of the latter half of the eighteenth century ; and forms a characteristical feature
in its philosophy , which even the imagination of Bacon was unable to foresee . It would be endless to particularize out
the original suggestions thrown by Bacon on topics connected with the science of mind . The few passages oi this sort already quoted , are produced merely as a specimen of the re They are by no means selected as tfi « most important in his writings ; bu » as they happened to be those whicn had Jeft the strongest impression - ° * my meraory , I thought them as HW
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504 Estimate of the Philosophical Character of Lord Bacon .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1816, page 504, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2456/page/4/
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