fall in with the description of the soul, which is the subject with which Cicero is concerned, does not appear to agree with the general applications of the term. Hermolaus Barbarus is said to have been so much oppressed with this difficulty of translation, that he consulted the evil spirit by night, entreating to be supplied with a more common and familiar substitute for this word: the mocking fiend, however, suggested only a word equally obscure, and the translator, discontented with this, invented for himself the word perfectihabia.

We need not here notice the endless apparatus of technicalities which was, in later days, introduced into the Aristotelian philosophy; but we may remark, that their long continuance and extensive use show us how powerful technical phraseology is, for the perpetuation either of truth or error. The Aristotelian terms, and the metaphysical views which they tend to preserve, are not yet extinct among us. In a very recent age of our literature it was thought a worthy employment by some of the greatest writers of the day, to attempt to expel this system of technicalities by ridicule.

"Crambe regretted extremely that substantial forms, a race of harmless beings, which had lasted for many years, and afforded a comfortable subsistence to many poor philosophers, should now be hunted down like so many wolves, without a possibility of retreat. He considered that it had gone much harder with them than with essences, which had retired from the schools into the apothecaries' shops, where some of them had been advanced to the degree of quintessences.24

We must now say a few words on the technical terms which others of the Greek philosophical sects introduced.

2. Technical Forms of the Platonists.-The other sects of the Greek philosophy, as well as the Aristotelians, invented and adopted technical terms, and thus gave fixity to their tenets and consistency to their traditionary systems; of these I will mention a few.

A technical expression of a contemporary school has acquired perhaps greater celebrity than any of the terms of Aristotle. I mean the Ideas of Plato. The account which Aristotle gives of the origin of these will serve to explain their nature." "Plato," says he, "who, in his youth, was in habits of communication first with Cratylus and the Heraclitean opinions, which represent all the objects of sense as being in a perpetual flux, so that concerning these no science nor certain

24 Martinus Scriblerus, cap. vii.

25 Arist. Metaph. i. 6. The same account is repeated, and the subject discussed, Metaph. xii. 4.

knowledge can exist, entertained the same opinions at a later period also. When, afterwards, Socrates treated of moral subjects, and gave no attention to physics, but, in the subjects which he did discuss, arrived at universal truths, and before any man, turned his thoughts to definitions, Plato adopted similar doctrines on this subject also; and construed them in this way, that these truths and definitions must be applicable to something else, and not to sensible things: for it was impossible, he conceived, that there should be a general common definition of any sensible object, since such were always in a state of change. The things, then, which were the subjects of universal truths he called Ideas; and held that objects of sense had their names according to Ideas and after them; so that things participated in that Idea which had the same name as was applied to them."

In agreement with this, we find the opinions suggested in the Parmenides of Plato, the dialogue which is considered by many to contain the most decided exposition of the doctrine of Ideas. In this dialogue, Parmenides is made to say to Socrates, then a young man,* "O Socrates, philosophy has not yet claimed you for her own, as, in my judgment, she will claim you, and you will not dishonor her. As yet, like a young man as you are, you look to the opinions of men. But tell me this: it appears to you, as you say, that there are certain Kinds or Ideas (si) of which things partake and receive applications according to that of which they partake: thus those things which partake of Likeness are called like; those things which partake of Greatness are called great; those things which partake of Beauty and Justice are called beautiful and just." To this Socrates assents. And in another part of the dialogue he shows that these Ideas are not included in our common knowledge, from whence he infers that they are objects of the Divine mind.

27

In the Phædo the same opinion is maintained, and is summed up in this way, by a reporter of the last conversation of Socrates, sivas Ti ἕκαστον τῶν εἰδῶν, καὶ τούτων τ' άλλα μεταλαμβάνοντα αὐτῶν τούτων τὴν Eravuμíav oxen; "that each Kind has an existence, and that other things partake of these Kinds, and are called according to the Kind of which they partake."

The inference drawn from this view was, that in order to obtain true and certain knowledge, men must elevate themselves, as much as possible, to these Ideas of the qualities which they have to consider:

and as things were thus called after the Ideas, the Ideas had a priority and pre-eminence assigned them. The Idea of Good, Beautiful, and Wise was the "First Good," the "First Beautiful," the "First Wise." This dignity and distinction were ultimately carried to a large extent. Those Ideas were described as eternal and self-subsisting, forming an "Intelligible World," full of the models or archetypes of created things. But it is not to our purpose here to consider the Platonic Ideas in their theological bearings. In physics they were applied in the same form as in morals. The primum calidum, primum frigidum were those Ideas of fundamental Principles by participation of which, all things were hot or cold.

This school did not much employ itself in the development of its principles as applied to physical inquiries: but we are not without examples of such speculations. Plutarch's Treatise Пspi rou Пpúrou Tuxpo, “On the First Cold," may be cited as one. It is in reality a discussion of a question which has been agitated in modern times also; -whether cold be a positive quality or a mere privation. "Is there, O Favorinus," he begins, "a First Power and Essence of the Cold, as Fire is of the Hot; by a certain presence and participation of which all other things are cold or is rather coldness a privation of heat, as darkness is of light, and rest of motion?”

3. Technical Forms of the Pythagoreans.—The Numbers of the Pythagoreans, when propounded as the explanation of physical phenomena, as they were, are still more obscure than the Ideas of the Platonists. There were, indeed, considerable resemblances in the way in which these two kinds of notions were spoken of. Plato called his Ideas unities, monads; and as, according to him, Ideas, so, according to the Pythagoreans, Numbers, were the causes of things being what they are. But there was this difference, that things shared the nature of the Platonic Ideas "by participation," while they shared the nature of Pythagorean Numbers "by imitation." Moreover, the Pythagoreans followed their notion out into much greater development than any other school, investing particular numbers with extraordinary attributes, and applying them by very strange and forced analogies. Thus the number Four, to which they gave the name of Tetractys, was held to be the most perfect number, and was conceived to correspond to the human soul, in some way which appears to be very imperfectly understood by the commentators of this philosophy.

28 Arist. Metaph. i. 6.

It has been observed by a distinguished modern scholar,29 that the place which Pythagoras ascribed to his numbers is intelligible only by supposing that he confounded, first a numerical unit with a geometrical point, and then this with a material atom. But this criticism appears to place systems of physical philosophy under requisitions too severe. If all the essential properties and attributes of things were fully represented by the relations of number, the philosophy which supplied such an explanation of the universe, might well be excused from explaining also that existence of objects which is distinct from the existence of all their qualities and properties. The Pythagorean love of numerical speculations might have been combined with the doctrine of atoms, and the combination might have led to results well worth notice. But so far as we are aware, no such combination was attempted in the ancient schools of philosophy; and perhaps we of the present day are only just beginning to perceive, through the disclosures of chemistry and crystallography, the importance of such a line of inquiry.

4. Technical Forms of the Atomists and Others.-The atomic doctrine, of which we have just spoken, was one of the most definite of the physical doctrines of the ancients, and was applied with most perseverance and knowledge to the explanation of phenomena. Though, therefore, it led to no success of any consequence in ancient times, it served to transmit, through a long series of ages, a habit of really physical inquiry; and, on this account, has been thought worthy of an historical disquisition by Bacon.30

The technical term, Atom, marks sufficiently the nature of the opinion. According to this theory, the world consists of a collection of simple particles, of one kind of matter, and of indivisible smallness (as the name indicates), and by the various configurations and motions of these particles, all kinds of matter and all material phenomena are produced.

To this, the Atomic Doctrine of Leucippus and Democritus, was opposed the Homoiomeria of Anaxagoras; that is, the opinion that material things consist of particles which are homogeneous in each kind of body, but various in different kinds: thus for example, since by food the flesh and blood and bones of man increase, the author of this doctrine held that there are in food particles of flesh, and blood,

29 Thirlwall's Hist. Gr. ii. 142.

30 Parmenidis et Telesii et præcipue Democriti Philosophia, &c., Works, vol. ix. 317.

and bone. As the former tenet points to the corpuscular theories of modern times, so the latter may be considered as a dim glimpse of the idea of chemical analysis. The Stoics also, who were, especially at a later period, inclined to materialist views, had their technical modes of speaking on such subjects. They asserted that matter contained in itself tendencies or dispositions to certain forms, which dispositions they called yo depμarixoi, seminal proportions, or seminal reasons.

Whatever of sound view, or right direction, there might be in the notions which suggested these and other technical expressions, was, in all the schools of philosophy (so far as physics was concerned) quenched and overlaid by the predominance of trifling and barren speculations; and by the love of subtilizing and commenting upon the works of earlier writers, instead of attempting to interpret the book of nature. Hence these technical terms served to give fixity and permanence to the traditional dogmas of the sect, but led to no progress of knowledge.

The advances which were made in physical science proceeded, not from these schools of philosophy (if we except, perhaps, the obligations of the science of Harmonics to the Pythagoreans), but from reasoners who followed an independent path. The sequel of the ambitious hopes, the vast schemes, the confident undertakings of the philosophers of ancient Greece, was an entire failure in the physical knowledge of which it is our business to trace the history. Yet we are not, on that account, to think slightingly of these early speculators. They were men of extraordinary acuteness, invention, and range of thought; and, above all, they had the merit of first completely unfolding the speculative faculty-of starting in that keen and vigorous chase of knowledge out of which all the subsequent culture and improvement of man's intellectual stores have arisen. The sages of early Greece form the heroic age of science. Like the first navigators in their own mythology, they boldly ventured their untried bark in a distant and arduous voyage, urged on by the hopes of a supernatural success; and though they missed the imaginary golden prize which they sought, they unlocked the gates of distant regions, and opened the seas to the keels of the thousands of adventurers who, in succeeding times, sailed to and fro, to the indefinite increase of the mental treasures of mankind.

But inasmuch as their attempts, in one sense, and at first, failed, we must proceed to offer some account of this failure, and of its nature and

causes.