tion. Introdue that for many local and supplementary illustrations of science, no other depository Section III could be furnished. As the philosophical arrangement is, however, most conducive to the purposes of intellectual research and information, as it will most naturally interest men of science and literature; will present the circle of knowledge in its harmony; will give that unity of design and of elucidation, the want of which we have most deeply felt in other works of a similar kind, where the desired information is divided into innumerable fragments scattered over many volumes, like a mirror broken on the ground, presenting, instead of one, a thousand images, but none entire; this division must of necessity, have that prominence in the prosecution of our design, which our conviction of its importance to the due execution of the plan demands; and every other part of the arrangement must be considered as subordinate to this principal organization. With respect to the whole work, it should be observed, that in what concerns references we are guided by principle, not by caprice; nor do we ever recur to them as our only means of escape from an exigency. Throughout the ENCYCLOPEDIA METROPOLITANA, the philosophical arrangement predominates and regulates; the alphabetical arrangement, and the references, whether to it or from it, are auxiliary. We never refer from the first and second Divisions to the fourth, or from the first to the second, for the explanation of a term, the establishment of a principle, or the demonstration of a proposition. The reference, whenever it occurs, unless it be retrospective, is not for the purpose of essential information, but for that which is collateral and subordinate. The theory of the balance, for example, is given where it ought to be, in the Treatise on Mechanics; but they who wish to acquaint themselves with the various constructions of balances for the purposes of commerce or philosophy, knowing that these cannot be introduced into a scientific treatise, without destroying the symmetry of its parts by a suspension of the logical order, will naturally turn, whether there be a reference or not, to the alphabetical department of the work. So again, the principles of the telescope are given in the treatise on Optics; the varieties of construction in the alphabetical department: the principles of the thermometer, when treating of the effects of heat; its varieties of construction in the alphabetical department. Practical detail, and niceties or peculiarities of construction, can seldom be interwoven with propriety among the regular deductions of a methodical treatise: in all cases where they cannot, our general principle, as it comprehends proportion, accuracy, utility, and convenience, demands a reference, whether expressed or not, to the appropriate place for all that is subservient; that is, to the fourth or alphabetical division. troduc This final division of our work will bring the whole into unison with the two great Section III. impulses of modern times, trade and literature. These, after the dismemberment of the Roman empire, gradually reduced the conquerors and the conquered at once into several nations and a common Christendom. The natural law of increase, and the instincts of family, may produce tribes, and under rare and peculiar circumstances, settlements and neighbourhoods: and conquest may form empires. But without trade and literature, combined, there can be no nation; without commerce and science, no bond of nations. As the one has for its object the wants of the body, real or artificial, the desires for which are for the greater part excited from without; so the other has for its origin, as well as for its object, the wants of the mind, the gratification of which is a natural and necessary condition of its growth and sanity. In the pursuits of commerce the man is called into action from without, in order to appropriate the outward world, as far as he can bring it within his reach, to the purposes of his corporeal nature. In his scientific and literary character he is internally excited to various studies and pursuits, the ground-work of which is in himself. This, again, will conduct us to the distinguishing object of the present undertaking; in endeavouring to explain which we have dwelt long upon general principles; but not too long, if we have established the necessity of what we conceive to be the main characteristic of every just arrangement of knowledge. Our method embraces the two-fold distinction of human activity to which we have adverted; the two great directions of man and society, with their several objects and ends. Without advocating the exploded doctrine of perfectibility, we cannot but regard all that is human in human nature, and all that in nature is above herself, as together working forward that far deeper and more permanent revolution in the moral world, of which the recent changes in the political world may be regarded as the pioneering whirlwind and storm. But woe to that revolution which is not guided by the historic sense; by the pure and unsophisticated knowledge of the past: and to convey this methodically, so as to aid the progress of the future, has been already announced as the distinguishing claim of the ENCYCLOPEDIA METROPOLITANA. THE principles of Method, developed in the preceding Essay, will, it is hoped, render perfectly intelligible the Plan of our whole work, which is comprehended under Four Divisions as follow: PURE FORMAL. 2 VOLS. REAL. FIRST DIVISION. Universal Grammar and Philology: or the forms of Languages. Mathematics: (Geometry, Arithmetic, Algebra, &c.) or the forms and Metaphysics: or the universal principles and conditions of Experi- Theology or the union of both in their application to GOD, the MISCELLANEOUS AND LEXICOGRAPHICAL. 8 VOLS. APPLICATION OF NATURAL HISTORY. Anatomy. Surgery. Materia Medica. Pharmacy. Medicine. THIRD DIVISION. Biography CHRONOLOGICALLY arranged, interspersed with introductory Chapters of National History, Political Geography and Chronology, and accompanied with correspondent Maps and Charts. FOURTH DIVISION. Alphabetical, Miscellaneous, and Supplementary:-containing a GAZETTEER or complete Vocabulary of Geography: and a Philosophical and Etymological LEXICON of the English Language, or the History of English Words;-the citations arranged according to the Age of the Works from which they are selected, yet with every attention to the independent beauty or value of the sentences chosen which is consistent with the higher ends of a clear insight into the original and acquired meaning of every word. The INDEX.-Being a digested and complete Body of Reference to the whole Work; in which the known English name, as well as the scientific name, of every subject of Natural History, will be found in its alphabetical place. ENCYCLOPÆDIA METROPOLITANA; OR, THE UNIVERSAL DICTIONARY OF KNOWLEDGE, ON AN ORIGINAL PLAN. First Division. GRAMMA R. Gammar. INTRODUCTORY SECTION. GRAMMAR (Fr. Grammaire) is a word used to signify both the pure science of universal Grammar Sonifica common to all languages, and the applied sciences of particular Grammar restricted each to its particular language or dialect. versal and particular. It is only of Grammar, in the first of these acceptations, that we mean, at present, to treat. In a methodical view of the Pure and Applied Sciences, it is essentially necessary to begin with the former: nor can any particular Grammar be well and thoroughly understood, without some previous knowledge of universal Grammar, as its foundation. Grammar, then, in its most comprehensive sense, may be defined, the science of the relations of language considered as significant. We say " of the relations of language," because the knowledge of languages, in as far as it regards the mere acquisition and remembrance of terms, is an affair of the attention and of the memory; whereas to understand the relations which those terms bear to each other, is the business of a science especially directed toward that end. We say too" of language considered as significant;" because language has other properties besides that of signification. Words, for instance, may be made up of longer or shorter sounds, may be delivered with varieties of accentuation, and may be uttered in a softer or louder voice; but these and many other circumstances relative to language, do not properly fall under the science of Grammar, although some of them may be considered as its adjuncts, or dependencies. Of the term “ Language," which we have used in our definition, we must speak more at large. As the word "Grammar," though introduced into English from the French, is derived from the Greek verb yoago VOL. I. tion. "I write" so the word "language," which comes Introducimmediately to us from the French word langage, tory Secoriginates in the Latin lingua, "the tongue;" and therefore anciently signified only the use of the tongue in speech. A just analogy, however, has extended its meaning to all intentional modes of communicating the movements of the mind: thus we use the expressions, "articulate language," "written language," "the language of gesture," &c.; and this analogy suggests some considerations, which will be found important, in developing the first principles of grammatical science. Man is formed as well internally, as externally, for the communication of thoughts and feelings. He is urged to it by the necessity of receiving, and by the desire of imparting, whatever is useful or pleasant. His wants and wishes cannot be satisfied by individual power: his joys and sorrows cannot be limited to individual sensation. The fountains of his wisdom and of his love spontaneously flow, not only to fertilize the neighbouring soil, but to augment the distant ocean. But the mind of man which is within him, can only by communicated by objects which are without, by gestures, sounds, characters more or less expressive, and permanent, instruments not merely useful for this particular purpose, but many times pleasing in themselves, or rendered so, by the long continued operation of habit. These, reason adopts, she combines, she arranges; and the result is a language. Speech, or the language of articulate sounds, is the Speech. most wonderful, the most delightful of the arts, thus taught by nature and reason. It is also the most perfect. It enables us, as it were, to express things beyond the reach of expression, the infinite range of B Grammar. being, the exquisite fineness of emotion, the intricate subtleties of thought. Of such effect are those shadows of the soul, those living sounds, which we call words! Compared with them, how poor are all other monuments of human power, or perseverance, or skill, or genius! They render the mere clown an artist; nations immortal; orators, poets, philosophers divine! The dialects or systems of speech adopted by various races of men, in different ages and countries, have been, in many respects, strikingly distinguishable. We may remark the copious Arabic, the high sounding Spanish, the broad Dutch, the voluble French, the soft Italian: we may trace minute gradations from the monosyllables of the Chinese, to the long paragraph words of the Sanscrit; or we may rise, still more gradually, in the scale of expression, from the barbarous muttering of a poor Esquimaux in his solitary canoe, to the thunders of Athenian eloquence, and those delightful strains of our own Shakespeare, which are "musical as is Apollo's lute, and a perpetual feast of nectar'd. Method of study. Lord Bacon. sweets." Nor is this all: a thousand collateral circumstances tend still further to diversify the numerous spoken languages of the world. Not only does time produce gradual progress, or sudden change in their forms; but their effect is endlessly modified by combination with other arts of expression, with looks, and actions, with sights and sounds. In this labyrinth of interesting observations, what objects have we to pursue; what clue to guide us? Shall we be content to learn one or two dialects by rote; to burthen the memory without exercising the understanding? Or, if we would rise above this, to a knowledge of their construction, must we draw our general principles from the minute comparison of those numberless particulars, which the longest life would be too short even to contemplate, and which the united wisdom of ages has never attempted to arrange? The very statement of these questions is a sufficient solution of them. They indicate at once the necessity of assuming some comprehensive principles as the rule and basis of our further enquiries. These first elements of our reasoning must afterwards be followed out into all their concrete forms. The history of language must verify the science; but the science must precede; for such, in the order of nature, is the course of all our knowledge. General notions, vague and indistinct, come first; they form, as it were, the channels into which our daily observations flow; and these observations again correct and strengthen our former notions, and render them sources of clear and abundant knowledge. LORD BACON, indeed, says, that" that would be the most noble kind of Grammar, which would be formed, if a man profoundly skilled in many languages, vulgar as well as learned, were to treat of the various properties of each, and to show their several excellencies and defects." But it is obvious, that his lordship here speaks only of the last result of the grammarian's studies; it is previously necessary, not only to learn the words of the languages which are to be arranged and compared; but to acquire the arts of arrangement and comparison. The first step toward a perfect arrangement is to comprehend the whole subject matter under a general idea; and from what we have already said, it is mani tion. fest that the idea of speech is included in the still more Introducgeneral idea of language, which comprehends the tory Secprinciples common to speech, with gesture, writing, &c. The various arts to which these principles are capable of application may be considered as branches of one great family; they are all derived from the same source always analogous to, sometimes associated or interwoven with each other; and hence, like the sister graces, they will appear to the greatest advantage together. The general idea of language, applicable to all these various modes of its exercise, is, as we have said, a communication of the thoughts and feelings of the mind. But how can we understand the communication, unless we have some idea of the thing communicated? And which shall we consider as the original and shaping power of a word, the sound, or the thought? These questions cannot bear a moment's reflection. If the word were parent to the thought, a parrot or a speaking automaton might be made to understand gravitation, as well as Sir Isaac Newton. And yet there are men, in the present day, calling themselves grammarians and philosophers, who have pushed absurdity so far as to assert, that the faculty of reason itself depends wholly on speech! Assuredly to know the powers and employments of the tongue conduces greatly to strengthen and facilitate the operations of the mind; but we can-not understand the former until we have made considerable progress in the knowledge of the latter. The late Mr. HORNE TOOKE, in his well known work, Horne "The Diversions of Purley," speaks thus: "The busi- Tooke. ness of the mind (as far as it concerns language) is very simple. It extends no farther than to receive impressions; that is, to have sensations or feelings. What are called its operations are merely the operations of language." Let us here ask, What can possibly be meant by "the operations of language," as distinct from those of the mind? Who is language? How does he operate? If my mind, as far as concerns language, do nothing but receive impressions, how comes it to pass that I ever open my lips? And when I speak, how happens it that I utter articulate sounds; that those sounds form words; that those words are arranged in a certain order; and that that order is absolutely essential to my being understood? How does language operate, so as to shape itself into nouns and verbs; and those the very nouns and verbs, which I happen to want; and all the while, without any privity or interference of mine, or any act whatsoever of my mind? It is proper, however, here to observe, that in respect to the general principles here adverted to, Mr. Tooke has neither the merit, nor the demerit, of originality. He is so far a follower of Condillac and the writers Condillac. of that school, of whose general opinions the following passage may afford a sufficient specimen: and we voluntarily select it from a work published in 1803, by a Member of the French National Institute, and reedited and corrected in 1804 by another Member of the same learned body, at present a peer of France. "We cannot distinguish our sensations," says the author, "but by attaching to them signs which represent and characterise them. This is what made Condillac say, that we cannot think at all without the help of language. I repeat it, without signs there exists neither thought, nor perhaps even, to speak properly, any true sensation. In order to distinguish a sensation, |