ascribe, mainly, to the progress of physical science. For a great body of undeniable truths on physical subjects being accumulated, such as had no reference to nor connexion with the truths of religion, and yet such as possessed a strong interest for most men's minds, it was impossible longer to deny that there were wide provinces of knowledge which were not included in the dominions of Theology, and over which she had no authority. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the fundamental doctrines of mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, magnetics, chemistry, were established and promulgated; and along with them, a vast train of consequences, attractive to the mind by the ideal relations which they exhibited, and striking to the senses by the power which they gave man over nature. Here was a region in which philosophy felt herself entitled and impelled to assert her independence. From this region, there is a gradation of subjects in which philosophy advances more and more towards the peculiar domain of religion; and at some intermediate points there have been, and probably will always be, conflicts respecting the boundary line of the two fields of speculation. For the limit is vague and obscure, and appears to fluctuate and shift with the progress of time and knowledge. Our business at present is not with the whole extent and limits of philosophy, but with the progress of physical science more particularly, and the methods by which it may be attained: and we are endeavouring to trace historically the views which have prevailed respecting such methods, at various periods of man's intellectual progress. Among the most conspicuous of the revolutions which opinions on this subject have undergone, is the transition from an implicit trust in the internal powers of man's mind to a professed dependence upon external observation; and from an unbounded reverence for the wisdom of the past, to a fervid expectation of change and improvement. The origin and progress of this disposition of mind;--the introduction of a state of things in which men not only obtained a body of indestructible truths from experience, and increased it from generation to generation, but professedly, and we may say, ostentatiously, declared such to be the source of their knowledge, and such their hopes of its destined career;--the rise, in short, of Experimental Philosophy, not only as a habit, but as a Philosophy of Experience, is what we must now endeavour to exhibit. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 48: See the opinion of Aquinas, in Degerando, _Hist. Com. des Syst._ iv. 499; of Duns Scotus, _ibid._ iv. 523.] [Footnote 49: _Liber Excerptionum_, Lib. i. c. i.] [Footnote 50: _Tr. Ex._ Lib. i. c. vii.] [Footnote 51: Tenneman, viii. 461.] [Footnote 52: _Mores Catholici, or Ages of Faith_, viii. p. 247.] [Footnote 53: Tenneman, viii. 460.]