32 THE GREEK SCHOOL PHILOSOPHY. 



often venture so far to trust their principles as to infer from them prop- 

 ositions beyond the domain of sense. Thus, the principle that each 

 element seeks its own place, led to the doctrine that, the place of fire 

 being the highest, there is, above the air, a Sphere of Fire of which 

 doctrine the word Empyrean, used by our poets, still conveys a remi- 

 niscence. The Pythagorean tenet that ten is a perfect number, 7 led 

 some persons to assume that the heavenly bodies are in number ten ; 

 and as nine only were known to them, they asserted that there was an 

 antichthon, or counter-earth, on the other side of the sun, invisible to 

 us. Their opinions respecting numerical ratios, led to various other 

 speculations concerning the distances and positions of the heavenly 

 bodies : and as they had, in other cases, found a connection between 

 proportions of distance and musical notes, they assumed, on this sug- 

 gestion, the music of the spheres. 



Although we shall look in vain in the physical philosophy of the 

 Greek Schools for any results more valuable than those just mentioned, 

 we shall not be surprised to find, recollecting how much an admiration 

 for classical antiquity has possessed the minds of men, that some wri- 

 ters estimate their claims much more highly than they are stated here. 

 Among such writers we may notice Dutens, who, in 17 60, published his 

 "Origin of the Discoveries attributed to the Moderns; in which it is 

 shown that our most celebrated Philosophers have received the great- 

 est part of their knowledge from the Works of the Ancients." The 

 thesis of this work is attempted to be proved, as we might expect, by 

 very large interpretations of the general phrases used by the ancients. 

 Thus, when Timaeus, in Plato's dialogue, says of the Creator of the 

 world, 8 " that he infused into it two powers, the origins of motions, 

 both of that of the same thing and of that of different things;" Du- 

 tens 9 finds in this a clear indication of the projectile and attractive 

 forces of modern science. And in some of the common declamation 

 of the Pythagoreans and Platonists concerning the general prevalence 

 of numerical relations in the universe, he discovers their acquaintance 

 with the law of the inverse square of the distance by which gravitation 

 is regulated, though he allows 10 that it required all the penetration of 

 Newton and his followers to detect this law in the scanty fragments by 

 which it is transmitted. 



Argument of this kind is palpably insufficient to cover the failure Oi 

 the Greek attempts at a general physical philosophy; or rather we 



' Arist. Metapli. i. 5. Tim. 96. 3d ed. p. 83. l Ib. o. 88. 



