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The philosophy of ancient Greece investigated (1791)
The philosophy of ancient Greece investigated - 1791 Author:Walter Anderson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SEC. T. II. Preliminary reasoning of the Pythagoreans.—Their argument for the Incorporeal Nature being the Original Principle in the Univerfe ;—and why they P... more »hilofophifed by Numbers.—Views of Theories in Theology and Morals. TW O natures of things, the incorporeal and corporeal, were held by the Pythagoreans as together conftituting the univerfe. They, therefore, defined philofophy to be the fcience of things divine and human, or of objefts intelligible by the mind, and of thofe perceived by the fenfes. In difcuffing the queftion, into which of thefe two component parts of the univerfe, its principle might, moft rationally, be re- folved, they held it to be an evident truth, that bodies could never be the principle of bodies. All of them, faid they, apparent to us, are compounded ; and, therefore, in none of them is to be difcerned a firft principle. To alledge, that the minute particles of bodies, although they efcape the fenfes, may have the form of principles, is a vague afiertion, and, when confidered, leads to no conclufion. For, if we fuppofe any fpecies of body to be analyfed, and its fmalleft particles to be reduced into thofe which are fmaller ; yet, whether thefe be called atoms, or in- vifible quantities, we can ftill conceive a further diminution of them, and that to proceed in an endlefs feries. There is, therefore, no principle of originality either apparent or conceivable in bodies ; and thofe who infill upon it, are only right in faying, that it is unapparent and obfcure. But they ought to go further, in order to difcover the truth, and acknowledge, that, if fuch a principle obtains in the univerfe, it is to be found in the incorporeal nature, or that genus of being which is comprehended only by the mind j otherwise it muft be -concluded, thatthe world is wit...« less