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yet the eye and the ear are organs, which offer to the mind fuch materials, by means whereof she 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 (4) evolution or afcent, we arrive at the higheft. Senfe fupplies images to memory. These become fubjects for fancy to work upon. Reafon confiders and judges of the imaginations. And these 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 uppermoft 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 highest. 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 betrayed into fome curiofity concerning the intellectual.

304. There is, accordingto 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 exiftance 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 rooihov and, 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 Tv is understood 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 Theætetus, 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 viewed 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 reafon, and no experiment of fenfe.

305. As understanding perceiveth not, that is, doth not hear, or fee, or feel, so sense knoweth not: And although the mind may use both fenfe and fancy, 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 perceptions, but in the reafoning upon them, τῷ σε ἐκείνων συλλογισμῷ.

306. In the ancient philofophy of Plato and Pythagoras, we find diftinguished three forts of objects: In the first place a form or fpecies that is neither generated nor deftroyed, unchangeable, invifible, 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 (f) 263. (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 realoning λογισμῷ τινι νόθῳ μόγις πιςόν. See his Timæus. The fame doctrine is contained in the Pythagoric treatise De anima mundi, which diftinguishing ideas, fenfible things, and matter, maketh the first to be apprehended by intellect, the fecond by fenfe, and the laft, to wit, matter, λογισμῷ νόθῳ· whereof Themiftius the Peripatetic affigns the reason. For, faith he, that act is to be efteemed fpurious, whofe object hath nothing pofitive, being only a mere privation, as filence or darknefs. And fuch he accounteth matter.

307. Ariftotle maketh a threefold distinction 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 abftracted and immoveable; which diftinction may be feen in the ninth book of his Metaphyfics. Where by abftracted, xwessov, 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, likenefs, 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 also befides these her own acts or operations; fuch are notions.

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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 foul; 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 understand and to be, are according to Parmenides the fame thing. And Plato, in his feventh letter, makes no difference between 18s and misun, 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 its original state as a blank paper, yet he held it to be the proper place of forms, luxle εἶναι τίπον εἴδων (α). Which do&rine frft maintained by others he admits, 'under this reftriction, that it is not to be underflood of the whole foul, but only of the vonlinn; as is to be feen in his third book De anima. Whence, according to Themiftius in his commentary on that treatise, 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; lalu μορφῶσα ποικίλαις μορφαῖς. Therefore they are frft 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, xalá TE TO VOETY, TO aláves. And (a) 269,

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this in fact is Ariftotle's own doctrine in his third
book De anima, where he alfo afferts, with Plato,
that actual knowledge and the thing known are all
one: τὸ αὐτὸ δέ ἐσιν ἡ κατ' ἐνέργειαν ἐπιςήμη τῷ
πράγματι
weyual Whence it follows that the things are
where the knowledge is, that is to fay, in the mind.
Or, as it is otherwife expreffed, that the foul is
all things. More might be faid to explain Ariftotle's
notion, but it would lead too far.

311. As to an abfolute actual existence (b) of fenfible or corporeal things, it doth not feem to have been admitted either by Plato or Ariftotle. In the Theatetus we are told, that if any one faith a thing is or is made, he muft withal fay, for what, or of what, or in refpect of what, it is or is made; for, that any thing fhould exift in itfelf or abfolutely, is abfurd. Agreeably to which doctrine it is alfo farther affirmed by Plato, that it is impoffible a thing fhould be sweet, and sweet to no body. It must nevertheless be owned with regard to Ariftotle, that, even in his Metaphyfics there are some expreffions which feem to favour the abfolute exiftence of corporeal things. For inftance, in the eleventh book fpeaking of corporeal fenfible things, What wonder, faith he, if they never appear to us the fame, no, more than to fick men, fince we are always changing, and never remain the fame ourselves? And again, he faith, Senfible things, although they receive no change in themselves, do nevertheless in fick perfons produce different fenfations and not the fame. These paffages would feem to imply a distinct and abfolute existence of the objects of fenfe.

312. But it must be obferved, that Ariftotle diftinguifheth a twofold existence, potential and actual. It will not, therefore, follow, that, ac(b) 264, 292, 294.

cording

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