Progress and Tendencies of Science: An Address, Delivered Before the Diagnothian and Goethian Societies of Marshall College, at Mercersburg, Pa., September 29, 1840 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Progress and Tendencies of Science: An Address, Delivered Before the Diagnothian and Goethian Societies of Marshall College, at Mercersburg, Pa., September 29, 1840

From this View of the design of philosophy; this belief that the philosopher must be a man of different caste from the rest of mankind; that it was beneath him to be engaged in devising means for promoting the happiness, and aug menting the power of men, we are to trace nearly the whole difference between the science of the ancients and the mo derns. Abundant proofs, indeed, are furnished that the men engaged in such pursuits were not inferior in intellectual en dowments to any who have Since investigated the works of God. Incomparable specimens of the dialectical and the rhe torical. Arts are to be found in their writings. But when we look for something more, we are forced to say, with Bacon, that this philosophy was neither a vineyard nor an Olive ground, but an intricate wood of briars and thistles, from which those who lost themselves in it brought back many scratches and no food.f It has been well said, the ancient philosophy was a treadmill, not a path. It was made up Of revolving questions; of controversies which were always beginning again. It was a contrivance for having much exertion and no progress. The mind, accordingly, instead Of marching, marked There was no accumula tion Of truth; no advance in investigating the works of na ture; few even of the simple contrivances which the hum blest principles of science now have enabled us to originate.

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