mythological manner; and it was only owing to the confined capacities of the vulgar, that they blundered into polytheism. The Zeus, or Jupiter, was but the Ether; "Hen, or Juno, the Air; Kpov, or Saturn, Time; because before the world was, time was. "What God is," says Socrates," I know not; what he is not, I know." "Whatsoever is moved," says Chrysippus, "must necessarily be moved by another, either external or internal. But, lest this progression be into infinite, we must of necessity, at last, come to one First Mover, which is not moved by another. This First Mover, the cause and origin of all motion, is immoveable, one, eternal, and indivisible, void of all quality.* The world was made by God; for if there be any thing which produces such things, as man though endowed with reason cannot produce, that, doubtless, is greater and stronger, and more powerful than man. But man cannot make the celestial orbs; that, therefore, which made them, transcends man; and what can that be but God? Heraclitus, who lived about the 69th Olympiad, says, "Men are ignorant, that preserves the great bodies of the universe, God reducing * Aristotle. + Chrysippus. reducing their inequality to an even temper; that he makes whole those which are broken; stops such as are falling; gathers the dispersed together; illuminates the dark with his light; terminates the infinite with certain bounds; gives form to things which have none; gives sight to things void of sense; permeates all substance, striking, composing, dissolving, condensing, diffusing; he dissolves the dry into moist; he condenses the looser air, and continually moves the things above, and settles those beneath.* According to Plato, there are three apua, or principles. These are the ayatos, good, or the supreme mind; the vas, his intellect or ideas; and the unn, or soul of the world. The second of these principles, Philo, the learned Jew of Alexandria, called Logos, a term borrowed from the Scriptures, in consequence of its being there said, that the world was made by the word or logos of God, as Plato has made his vç, ideas, or intelligible world, to be the immediate source or cause of the visible universe. This logos, indeed, is not to be taken as the verbum, the enunciated reason of God; but, as the reason in the mind of the Deity. And it is somewhat extraordinary, that this reason is the second second person of the Christian Trinity, by whom we are told the world was created, and answers to the Seos Sucvgyes of Plato, who is also the second person of his trinity a doctrine, however he came by the knowledge of it, with which he was evidently acquainted. * The speculative, or metaphysical theology of the Platonists, and their fundamental principles of knowledge, we are indeed told, are only abstract and intellectual perplexities. To draw principles, and proleptic notions, directly out of the mind of man, was the same thing as to anatomize the eye, in order to search for the first principles and postulata of optics: for as it is the office of the eye, to contemplate and observe those objects with which it is presented, and thence to frame optical rules and maxims; so it is the office of the mind to speculate and consider those things which are any way conveyed to its notice, and thence to make general rules and observations, that after scrutiny and examination, are justly admitted for proleptic and fundamental verities. Metaphysical definitions, in order to the discovering the hidden essence of things, are mere vanity. And still further, we are so far from attaining any certain and real knowledge of incorporeal Monboddo. corporeal beings, that we are not able to know any thing of corporeal substances, abstracted from their accidents. Nothing can more perplex the human faculties, than the simple ideas of naked matter, and impalpable essence.* Having searched into all kinds of science, Socrates observed, he said, three imperfections and inconveniencies. First, that it was improper to leave those affairs which concern mankind, to inquire into things we are not connected with. Secondly, that these things are above the reach of man, whence are occasioned disputes and opposition; some acknowledging no God, others worshipping sticks and stones; some asserting one simple being, others infinite; some that all things are moved, others that all things are immoveable. And, thirdly, that these things, if attain ed, could not be practised; for he, who, contemplating divine mysteries, inquires by what necessity things were made, cannot himself make any thing, or upon occasion produce winds, waters, seasons, and the like. Socrates, notwithstanding this, was not so mad as to exclude mind from the system of the universe. Were Platonic Philosophy. ↑ Xenophon. Were all the writings of the ancients still in being, we should, no doubt, find an enormous mass of contradictions. As it is, we find an abundance of difference about first principles. That material principles were incomprehensible, was manifest from the disagreement of even the dogmatists about them. Pherecydes, the Syrian, asserted earth to be the principle of all things; Thales the Milesian, water; Anaximander, his disciple, Infinite; Anaximenes and Diogenes Appollionates, air; Hippasus the Metapontine, fire; Xenophanes, earth and water; Euripides, fire and air; Hippo of Rhejium, fire and water; Onomacritus, in his Orphics, fire, water, and earth; the followers of Aristotle, the Peripatetics, a circular moving body, consisting of fire, air, water, and earth; Democritus and Epicurus, atoms; Anaxagoras, homoiomeria; Diodorous Cronus, least and indivisible bodies; Heraclides of Pontus, uncompounded bulks, or little bodies; the Pythagoreans, numbers; the Mathematicians, the terms of bodies, Strato the naturalist, qualities. These, perhaps, are sufficient to shew the incomprehensibility of the elements and material principles. They all go to prove the elements either to be bodies or incorporeal. We, say the sceptics, conceive it sufficient to prove that both bodies and incor poreals |