king one whole, or all things together as making one universe. In doing which they did not exclude the intelligent mind, but confidered it as containing all things. Therefore, whatever was wrong in their way of thinking, it doth not, nevertheless, imply or lead to Atheism.

301. The humane mind is so much clogged, and born downward, by the ftrong and early impreffions of fenfe (a), that it is wonderful, how the ancients fhould have made even fuch a progress, and feen fo far into intellectual matters, without fome glimmering of a divine tradition. Whoever confiders a parcel of rude favages left to themfelves, how they are funk and fwallowed up in fenfe and prejudice, and how unqualified by their natural force to emerge from this ftate, will be apt to think that the first spark of philofophy was derived from heaven; and that it was (as a Heathen writer expreffeth it) Θεοπαράδα Φιλοσοφία.

302. The lapfed ftate of human kind is a thing to which the ancient philofophers were not strangers. The λύσις, the φυγή, the παλιΓυεσία few that the Egyptians and Pythagoreans, the Platonists and Stoics, had all fome notion of this doctrine, the outlines of which feem to have been sketched out in those tenets. Theology and philofophy gently unbind the ligaments, that chain the foul down to the earth, and affift her flight towards the fovereign Good. There is an inftinct or tendency of the mind upwards, which fheweth a natural endeavour to recover and raise ourselves, from our prefent fenfual and low condition, into a state of light, order, and purity.

303. The perceptions of fenfe are grofs: but even in the fenfes there is a difference. Though harmony and proportion are not objects of fenfe,

yet the eye and the ear are organs, which offer to the mind fuch materials, by means whereof the may apprehend both the one and the other. By experiments of fenfe we become acquainted with the lower faculties of the foul; and from them, whether by a gradual (a) evolution or afcent, we arrive at the higheft. Senfe fupplies images to memory. Thefe become fubjects for fancy to work upon. Reafon confiders and judges of the imaginations. And thefe acts of reafon become new objects to the understanding. In this fcale, each lower faculty is a ftep that leads to one above it. And the uppermost naturally leads to the Deity, which is rather the object of intellectual knowledge' than even of the difcurfive faculty, not to mention the fenfitive. There runs a chain throughout the whole fyftem of beings. In this chain one link drags another. The meaneft things are connected with the higheft. The calamity therefore is neither ftrange nor much to be complained of, if a low fenfual reader fhall, from mere love of the animal life, find himself drawn on, furprised, and betray'd into fome curiofity concerning the intellectual.

304. There is according to Plato properly no knowledge, but only opinion concerning things fenfible and perifhing (b), not because they are naturally abftrufe and involved in darknefs, but because their nature and existence is uncertain, ever fleeting and changing; or rather, because they do not in ftrict truth exift at all, being always generating or in fieri, that is, in a perpetual flux, without any thing ftable or permanent in them to conftitute an object of real fcience. The Pythagoreans and Platonics diftinguish between oor and ov, that which is ever generated and that which exifts. Senfible things and corporeal forms (a) 275. (b) 263, 264.

are

are perpetually producing and perifhing, appearing and difappearing, never refting in one ftate, but always in motion and change; and therefore in effect, not one being but a fucceffion of beings: while rod is underftood to be fomewhat of an abstract or fpiritual nature, and the proper object of intellectual knowledge. Therefore as there can be no knowledge of things flowing and inftable, the opinion of Protagoras and Theaetetus, that fenfe was fcience, is abfurd. And indeed nothing is more evident, than that the apparent fizes and fhapes, for inftance, of things are in a conftant flux, ever differing as they are view'd at different diftances, or with glaffes more or less accurate. As for thofe abfolute magnitudes and figures, which certain Cartefians and other moderns fuppofe to be in things, that must seem a vain fuppofition, to whoever confiders, it is fupported by no argument of reason, and no experiment of fenfe.

305. As understanding perceiveth not, that is, doth not hear or fee or feel, fo fenfe knoweth not: And although the mind may use both fenfe and phancy, as means whereby to arrive at knowledge yet fenfe or foul, fo far forth as fenfitive, knoweth nothing. For, as it is rightly obferved in the Theætetus of Plato, fcience confifts not in the paffive preceptions, but in the reafoning upon them, τῷ πεὶ ἐκείνων συλλογισμῷ.

306. In the ancient philofophy of Plato and Pythagoras, we find diftinguifhed three forts of objects: In the firft place a form or fpecies that is neither generated nor deftroyed, unchangeable, invisible, and altogether imperceptible to fenfe, being only understood by the intellect. A fecond fort there is ever fluent and changing (g), generating and perishing, appearing and vanishing. This 263, 264. (g) 292, 293.

is comprehended by fenfe and opinion. The third kind is matter which, as Plato teacheth, being neither an object of understanding nor of fenfe, is hardly to be made out by a certain fpurious way of reafoning λογισμῷ τινι νόθῳ μόγις πιςόν. See his Timæus. The fame doctrine is contained in the Pythagoric treatife De anima mundi, which dif tinguishing ideas, fenfible things, and matter, maketh the first to be apprehended by intellect, the fecond by fenfe, and the laft, to wit, matter, λoyiμ vol whereof Themiftius the Perripatetic affigns the reafon. For, faith he, that act is to be efteemed fpurious, whofe object hath nothing pofitive, being only a mere privation, as filence or darkness. And fuch he accounteth matter.

307. Ariftotle maketh a threefold diftinction of objects according to the three fpeculative fciences. Phyfics he fuppofeth to be converfant about fuch things as have a principle of motion in themselves; mathematics about things permanent but not abftracted; and theology about being abstracted and immoveable; which diftinction may be feen in the ninth book of his Metaphyfics. Where by ab. ftracted, xwessor, he understands feparable from corporeal beings and fenfible qualities.

308. That philofopher held that the mind of man was a tabula rafa, and that there were no innate ideas. Plato, on the contrary, held original ideas in the mind, that is, notions which never were or can be in the fenfe, fuch as being, beauty, goodness, likeness, parity. Some perhaps may think the truth to be this: That there are properly no ideas or paffive objects in the mind, but what were derived from fenfe: but that there are alfo befides thefe her own acts or operations; fuch are notions.

309. It is a maxim of the Platonic philofophy,

that

that the foul of man was originally furnished with native inbred notions, and ftands in need of fenfible occafions, not abfolutely for producing them, but only for awakening, roufing, or exciting into. act what was already pre-exiftent, dormant, and latent in the fou.; as things are faid to be laid up in the memory, though not actually perceived, until they happen to be called forth and brought into view by other objects. This notion feemeth fomewhat different from that of innate ideas, as understood by thofe moderns who have attempted to explode them. To underftand and to be, are according to Parmenides the fame thing. And Plato in his feventh letter makes no difference between 18 and isμn, mind and knowledge. Whence it follows, that mind, knowledge, and notions, either in habit or in act, always go together.

310. And albeit Ariftotle confidered the foul in it's original ftate as a blank paper, yet he held it to be the proper place of forms, the ugl Eivas TÓTTOV edwv (a). Which doctrine firft maintained by others he admits, under this reftriction, that it is not to be understood of the whole foul, but only of the von as is to be feen in his third book De anima. Whence, according to Themiftius in his commentary on that treatife, it may be inferred that all beings are in the foul. For, faith he, the forms are the beings. By the form every thing is what it is. And he adds, it is the foul that imparteth forms to matter; he alw μορφώσα ποικίλαις μορφαῖς. Therefore they are frit in the foul. He further adds, that the mind is all things, taking the forms of all things it becomes all things by intellect and fenfe. Alexander Aphrodifæus faith as much, affirming the mind to be all things, κατά τε τὸ νοεῖν καὶ τὸ αἰπάνες. And ἢ (a) 269.