ITS TECHNICAL FORMS. 70 



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 

 klea 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 Xoyoi rfepfxa-nxo/, 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 ear- 

 lier 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 acuteuess, invention, and range of thought ; and, 

 above all, they had the merit of first completely unfolding the specula- 

 tive faculty of starting in that keen and vigorous chase of knowledge 

 out of which all the subsequent culture and improvement of man's in- 

 tellectual stores have arisen. The sages of early Greece form the 

 heroic age of science. Like the first navigators in their own mythol- 

 ogy, 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 un- 

 locked 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. 



