DISCOURSE THE ELEVENTH,

ON THE

PHILOSOPHY OF THE ASIATICS.

Delivered 20th of February, 1794.

BY THE PRESIDENT.

HAD

it been of any importance, Gentlemen, to arrange these Anniversary Dissertations according to the ordinary progress of the human mind, in the gradual expansion of its three most considerable powers, memory, imagination, and reason, I should certainly have presented you with an essay on the liberal arts of the five Asiatic nations, before I produced my remarks on their abstract sciences; 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 substitution, is in general earlier exercised, and sooner attains maturity than the power of separating 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 philoso phers: 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 subject of Asiatic Philosophy are fresh in my remembrance, I propose to address you now on the sciences of Asia, reserving for our next annual meeting a disquisition concerning those fine arts which have immemorially been cultivated, with different success, and in very different modes, within the circle of our common inquiries.

By science I mean an assemblage of transcendental propositions discoverable by human reason, and reducible to first principles, axioms, or maxims, from which they may all be derived in a regular succession: and there are consequently as many sciences as there are general objects of our intellectual powers. When man first exerts those powers, his objects are himself and the rest of nature. Himself he perceives to be composed of body and mind; and in his individual capacity he reasons on the uses of his animal frame and of its parts, both exterior and internal; on the disorders impeding the regular functions of those parts, and on the most probable methods of preventing those disorders, or of removing them; he soon feels the close connexion between his corporeal and mental faculties: and when his mind is reflected on itself, he discourses on its essence and its operations: in his social character, he analyzes his various duties and rights, both private and public; and in the leisure which the fullest discharge of those duties always admits, his intellect is directed to nature at large, to the substance 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 universal, 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 demonstration of a First Intelligent Cause: whence his collected wisdom, being

arranged in the form of science, chiefly consists of physiology and medicine, metaphysics and logic, ethics. and jurisprudence, natural philosophy and mathematics; from which the religion of nature (since revealed religion must be referred to history, às alone affording evidence of it) has in all ages and in all nations been the sublime and consoling result. Without professing to have given a logical definition of science, or to have exhibited a perfect enumeration of its objects, I shall confine myself to those five divisions of Asiatic Philosophy; enlarging, for the most part, on the progress which the Hindus have made in them, and occasionally introducing the sciences of the Arabs and Persians, the Tartars and the Chinese: but, how extensive soever may be the range which I have chosen, I shall beware of exhausting your patience with tedious discussions, and of exceeding those limits which the occasion of our present meeting has necessarily prescribed.

I. The first article affords little scope; since I have no evidence that, in any language of Asia, there exists one original treatise on medicine considered as a science: physic, indeed, appears in these regions to have been from time immemorial, as we see it practised at this day by Hindus and Mussulmans, á mere empirical history 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 Chinese, of whose medical works I can at present say nothing with confidence) we still have access to a number of Sanscrit books on the old Indian practice of physic, from which, if the Hindus had a theoretical system, we might easily collect it. The

Ayurvéda, supposed to be the work of a celestial physician, is almost entirely lost, unfortunately, perhaps, for the curious European, but happily for the patient Hindu; since a revealed science precludes improvement from experience, to which that of medicine ought, above all others, to be left perpetually open but I have myself met with curious fragments of that primeval work; and, in the Véda itself, I found with astonishment an entire Upanishad on the internal parts of the human body; with an enumeration of the nerves, veins, and arteries; a description of the heart, spleen, and liver; and various disquisitions on the formation and growth of the foetus. From the laws, indeed, of Menu, which have lately appeared in our own language, we may perceive that the ancient Hindus were fond of reasoning, in their way, on the mysteries of animal generation, and on the comparative influence of the sexes in the production of perfect offspring; and we may collect from the authorities adduced in the learned Essay on Egypt and the Nile, that their physiological disputes led to violent schisms in religion, and even to bloody wars. On the whole, we cannot expect to acquire many valuable truths from an examination of eastern books on the science of medicine; but examine them we must, if we wish to complete the history of universal philosophy, and to supply the scholars of Europe with authentic materials for an account of the opinions anciently formed on this head by the philosophers of Asia. To know indeed, with certainty, that so much and no more can be known on any branch of science, would in itself be very important and useful knowledge, if it had no other effect than to check the boundless curiosity of mankind, and to fix them in the straight path of attainable science, especially of such as relates to their duties, and may conduce to their happiness.

II. We have an ample field in the next division, and a field almost wholly new, since the metaphysics and logic of the Brahmins, comprised in their sir philosophical Sástras, and explained by numerous glosses, or comments, have never yet been accessible to Europeans; and, by the help of the Sanscrit language we may now read the works of the Saugatus, Bauddhas, Arhatas, Jainas, and other heterodox philosophers, whence we may gather the metaphysical tenets prevalent in China and Japan, in the eastern peninsula of India, and in many considerable nations of Tartary. There are also some valuable tracts on these branches of science, in Persian and Arabic, partly copied from the Greeks, and partly comprising the doctrines of the Súf'is, which anciently prevailed, and still prevail in a great measure over this oriental world; and which the Greeks themselves con descended to borrow from eastern sages.

The little treatise in four chapters, ascribed to Vyása, is the only philosophical Sastra, the original text of which I have had leisure to peruse with a Brahmin of the Védánta school: it is extremely obscure, and though composed in sentences elegantly modulated, has more resemblance to a table of contents, or an accurate summary, than to a regular systematical tract; but all its obscurity has been cleared by the labour of the very judicious and most learned Sancara, whose commentary on the Vedánta which I read also with great attention, not only elucidates every word of the text, but exhibits a perspicuous account of all other Indian schools, from that of Capila to those of the more modern heretics. It is not possible, indeed, to speak with too much applause of so excellent a work; and I am confident in asserting, that, until an accurate translation of it shall appear in some European language, the general history of philosophy must remain incomVOL. IV.

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