part of natural history, we have an ample field yet unexplored; for, though many plants of Arabia have been made known by Garcias, Prosper Alpinus, and Forskoel; of Persia, by Garcin; of Tartary, by Gmelin and Pallas; of China and Japan, by Kompfer, Osbeck, and Thunberg; of India, by Rheede and Rumphius, the two Burmans, and the much lamented Koenig, yet none of those naturalists were deeply versed in the literature of the several countries from which their vegetable treasures had been procured; and the numerous works in Sanscrit on medical substances, and chiefly on plants, have never been inspected, or never at least understood, by any European attached to the study of nature. Until the garden of the India Company shall be fully stored (as it will be, no doubt, in due time) with Arabian, Persian, and Chinese plants, we may well be satisfied with examining the native flowers of our own provinces; but unless we can discover the Sanscrit names of all celebrated vegetables, we shall neither comprehend the allusions which Indian Poets perpetually make to them, nor (what is far worse) be able to find accounts of their tried virtues in the writings of Indian physicians; and (what is worst of all) we shall miss an opportunity which never again may present itself; for the Pandits themselves have almost wholly forgotten their ancient appellations of particular plants; and, with all my pains, I have not yet ascertained more than two hundred out of twice that number, which are named in their medical or poetical compositions. It is much to be deplored, that the illustrious Van Rheede had no acquaintance with Sanscrit, which even his three Brahmens, who composed the short preface engraved

in that language, appear to have understood very imperfectly, and certainly wrote with disgraceful inaccuracy. In all his twelve volumes, I recollect only Bunarnava, in which the Nagari letters are tolerably right; the Hindu words in Arabian characters are shamefully incorrect; and the Malabar, I am credibly informed, is as bad as the rest. His delineations, indeed, are in general excellent; and though Linnæus himself could not extract from his written descriptions the natural character of every plant in the collection, yet we shall be able, I hope, to describe them all from the life, and to add a considerable number of new species, if not of new genera, which Rheede, with all his noble exertions, could never procure. Such of our learned members as profess medicine, will no doubt cheerfully assist in these researches, either by their own observations, when they have leisure to make any, or by communications from other observers among their acquaintance, who may reside in different parts of the country: and the mention of their art leads me to the various uses of natural substances, in the three kingdoms or classes to which they are generally reduced.

III. You cannot but have remarked, that almost all the sciences, as the French call them, which are distinguished by Greek names, and arranged under the head of Philosophy, belong for the most part to History; such as philology, chemistry, physic, anatomy, and even metaphysics, when we barely relate the phenomena of the human mind; for, in all branches of knowledge, we are only historians when we announce facts; and philosophers only when we reason on them: the same may be confidently said of law and of medicine, the first of

which belongs principally to Civil, and the second chiefly to Natural History. Here, therefore, I speak of medicine, as far only as it is grounded on experiment; and, without believing implicitly what Arabs, Persians, Chinese, or Hindus may have written on the virtues of medicinal subjects, we may surely hope to find in their writings what our own experiments may confirm or disprove, and what might never have occurred to us without such intimations.

Europeans enumerate more than two hundred and fifty mechanical arts, by which the productions of nature may be variously prepared for the convenience and ornament of life; and though the Silpasastra reduces them to sixty-four, yet Abulfazl had been assured that the Hindus reckoned three hundred arts and sciences; now, their sciences being comparatively few, we may conclude that they anciently practised at least as many useful arts as ourselves. Several Pandits have informed me, that the treatises on art, which they call Upavedas, and believe to have been inspired, are not so entirely lost but that considerable fragments of them may be found at Benares ; and they certainly possess many popular, but ancient works on that interesting subject. The manufactures of sugar and indigo have been well known in these provinces for more than two thousand years; and we cannot entertain a doubt that their Sanscrit books on dying and metallurgy, contain very curious facts, which might indeed be discovered by accident in a long course of years, but which we may soon bring to light by the help of Indian literature, for the benefit of manufactures and artists, and consequently of our nation, who are

interested in their prosperity. Discoveries of the same kind might be collected from the writings of other Asiatic nations, especially of the Chinese; but, though Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Sanscrit are languages now so accessible, that in order to attain a sufficient knowledge of them, little more seems required than a strong inclination to learn them, yet the supposed 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 perspicuous grammar of M. Fourmont, together with a copious dictionary, which I possess in Chinese and Latin, would enable any man who pleased, to compare the original works of Confucius, which are easily procured, with the literal translation of them by Couplet; and having made that first step with attention, he would probably find that he had traversed at least half of his career. But I should be led beyond the limits assigned to me on this occasion, if I were to expatiate farther on the historical division of the knowledge comprised in the literature of Asia; and I must postpone till next year my remarks on Asiatic Philosophy, and on those arts which depend on imagination; promising you with confidence, that in the course of the present 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 associates and correspondents.

DISCOURSE XI.

DELIVERED FEBRUARY 20, 1794.

ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ASIATICS.

Introductory observations.-On physiology and medicine.Metaphysics and logic.-Ethics and jurisprudence.-Natural philosophy and mathematics.—And the religion of nature.

GENTLEMEN,

HAD it been of any importance 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