Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ESSAY II. CHAP. I. OF THE MIND RELATIVELY TO SOCIETY. Science is only the remembrance of the facts or ideas of others. The Mind, as distinguished from Science, is therefore an assemblage of new ideas of whatever kind. This definition of tin Mind is precise. It is even very in. strut iive to a philosopher, but cannot be generally adopted: a defmition for the public must be such as will enable them to compare different understandings, and to judge of their force and comprehension. But, if the above definition were admitted, how would the public measure the extent of a person's understanding ? Who could lay before them an exact list of his ideas? and how shall science and understanding be distinguished? Suppose I claim the discovery of an idea already known; the public, to be convinced whether the title of second inventor belongs to me, must previously know what I have read, seen, and heard; a knowledge, which it neither can nor will acquire. Besides, according to this impossible hypothesis, that the public could have an exact enumeration of the quantity and quality of a person's ideas; I say, that, in consequence of this (numeration, the public would be often obliged to class among geniuses, persons whom it denies to be men of wit; and such in general are all artificers. However frivolous an art may appear, yet it is susceptible of infinite combinations. When Marcel, with his hand placed on his forehead, his eyes fixed, his body without motion, and in the attitude of profound meditation, on seeing a young lady dance, cries out, What variety in a minute doubtless, this dancing-master then perceived in the manner of bending, rising, and performing the steps, elegancies invisible to commoneyes; and therefore his exclamation is no farther ridiculous than in the...