The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart/Volume 1/Part 1/Introduction

by Dugald Stewart

DISSERTATION.

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PART I.

In the following Historical and Critical Sketches, it has been judged proper by the different writers, to confine their views entirely to the period which has elapsed since the revival of letters. To have extended their retrospects to the ancient world, would have crowded too great a multiplicity of objects into the limited canvass on which they had to work. For my own part, I might perhaps, with still greater propriety, have confined myself exclusively to the two last centuries, as the Sciences 'of which I am to treat present but little matter for useful remark, prior to the time of Lord Bacon. I shall make no apology, however, for devoting, in the first place, a few pages to some observations of a more general nature; and to some scanty gleanings of literary detail, bearing more or less directly on my principal design.

On this occasion, as well as in the sequel of my Discourse, I shall avoid, as far as is consistent with distinctness and perspicuity, the minuteness of the mere bibliographer; and, instead of attempting to amuse my readers with a series of critical epigrams, or to dazzle them with a rapid succession of evanescent portraits, shall study to fix their attention on those great lights of the world by whom the torch of science has been successively seized and transmitted.^[1] It is, in fact, such leading characters alone which furnish matter for philosophical history. To enumerate the names and the labours of obscure or even secondary authors, (whatever amusement it might afford to men of curious erudition,) would contribute but little to illustrate the origin and filiation of consecutive systems, or the gradual development and progress of the human mind.

1. I have ventured here to combine a scriptural expression with an allusion of Plato's to a Grecian game; an allusion which, in his writings, is finely and pathetically applied to the rapid succession of generations, through with the continuity of human life is maintained from age to age; and which are perpetually transferring from hand to hand the concerns and duties of this fleeting scene. Τεγγᾶγτεις χᾶὶ ἰχτρίφογγτὶς παῖðας, χαɵάχἰρ λαμπάðα τὸγ βίογ παραðiðογτiς ἄλλαγ.—(Plato, Leg. lib. vi.
   "Et quasi cursores vitaï lampada tradunt."
   
   Lucret.