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in order to obtain a fufficient knowledge of them, little more feems required than a strong inclination to learn them, yet the fuppofed number and intricacy of the Chinese characters have deterred our most diligent students from attempting to find their way through so vast a labyrinth it is certain, however, that the difficulty has been magnified beyond the truth; for the perfpicuous grammar by M. FOURMONT, together with a copious dictionary, which I poffefs, in Chinese and Latin, would enable any man, who pleased, to compare the original works of CONFUCIUS, which are easily procured, with the literal tranflation of them by COUPLET; and, having made that first step with attention, he would probably find, that he had traversed at leaft half of his career. But I fhould be led beyond the limits affigned to me on this occafion, if I were to expatiate farther on the hiftorical divifion of the knowledge comprised in the literature of Afia; and I must poftpone till next year my remarks on Afiatick philosophy and on thofe arts, which depend on imagination; promifing you with confidence, that, in the course of the prefent year, your inquiries into the civil and natural history of this eastern world will be greatly promoted by the learned labours of many among our affociates and correspondents,

DISCOURSE THE ELEVENTH.

ON

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ASIATICKS.

DELIVERED 20 FEBRUARY, 1794.

BY

THE PRESIDENT.

HAD it been of any importance, gentlemen, to arrange these anniversary differtations according to the ordinary progrefs of the human mind, in the gradual expansion of its three moft confiderable powers, memory, imagination, and reafon, I should certainly have prefented you with an effay on the liberal arts of the five Afiatick nations, before I produced my remarks on their abstract fciences; because, from my own observation at least, it seems evident, that fancy, or the faculty of combining our ideas agreeably by various modes of imitation and fubftitution, is in general earlier exercised, and fooner attains maturity, than the power of feparating and comparing those ideas by the laborious exertions of intellect; and hence, I believe, it has happened, that all nations in the world had poets before

they had mere philofophers: but, as M. D'ALEMBERT has deliberately placed science before art, as the question of precedence is, on this occasion, of no moment whatever, and as many new facts on the fubject of Afiatick philosophy are fresh in my remembrance, I propose to address you now on the fciences of Afia, referving for our next annual meeting a difquifition concerning thofe fine arts, which have immemorially been cultivated, with different fuccefs and in very different modes, within the circle of our common inquiries.

By science I mean an affemblage of transcendental propofitions discoverable by human, reason, and reducible to first principles, axioms, or maxims, from which they may all be derived in a regular fucceffion; and there are confequently as many sciences as there are general objects of our intellectual powers: when man first exerts those powers, his objects are himself and the reft of nature; himself he perceives to be compofed of body and mind, and in his individual capacity, he reasons on the uses of his animal frame and of its parts both exteriour and internal, on the diforders impeding the regular functions of thofe parts, and on the most probable methods of preventing those disorders or of removing them; he foon feels the close connexion between his corporeal and mental faculties, and when

his mind is reflected on itself, he discourses on its effence and its operations; in his focial character, he analyzes his various duties and rights both private and publick; and in the leisure, which the fulleft discharge of those duties always admits, his intellect is directed to nature at large, to the fubftance of natural bodies, to their several properties, and to their quantity both separate and united, finite and infinite; from all which objects he deduces notions, either purely abstract and univerfal, or mixed with undoubted facts, he argues from phenomena to theorems, from those theorems to other phenomena, from causes to effects, from effects to causes, and thus arrives at the demonftration of a first intelligent caufe; whence his collected wisdom, being arranged in the form of science, chiefly confifts of phyfiology and medicine, metaphyficks and logick, ethicks and jurifprudence, natural philosophy and mathematicks; from which the religion of nature (fince revealed religion must be referred to history, as alone affording evidence of it) has in all ages and in all nations been the fublime and confoling refult. Without profeffing to have given a logical definition of fcience, or to have exhibited a perfect enumeration of its objects, I fhall confine myself to those five divifions of Afiatick philofophy, enlarging for the most part on the progress which the Hindus have made in

them, and occafionally introducing the sciences of the Arabs and Perfians, the Tartars, and the Chinefe; but, how extensive foever may be the range which I have chofen, I fhall beware of exhaufting your patience with tedious difcuffions, and of exceeding thofe limits, which the occafion of our present meeting has neceffarily prefcribed.

I. THE firft article affords little scope; fince I have no evidence, that, in any language of Afia, there exifts one original treatise on medicine confidered as a fcience: phyfick, indeed, appears in these regions to have been from time immemorial, as we fee it practised at this day by Hindus and Mufelmáns, a mere empirical biftory of diseases and remedies; useful, I admit, in a high degree, and worthy of attentive examination, but wholly foreign to the subject before us though the Arabs, however, have chiefly followed the Greeks in this branch of knowledge, and have themselves been implicitly followed by other Mohammedan writers, yet (not to mention the Chinefe, of whofe medical works I can at prefent fay nothing with confidence) we ftill have accefs to a number of Sanferit books on the old Indian practice of phyfick, from which, if the Hindus had a theoretical system, we might easily collect it. The Ayurvéda, fuppofed to be the work of a celestial

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