Epitome of the Progress of JVatural Science. 101 



to Athens, and opened the celebrated academic school, the influ 

 ence of which has been so powerful. We pass over his meta- 

 physical speculations, to his opinions which are more particular- 

 ly connected with natural history. Many of these are based 

 upon the traditions of geological revolutions, similar to those re- 

 flected to us from every people. In one of his dialogues, he sup- 

 poses Solon to have been told by a priest of Sais, in lower Egypt, 

 that Sais had been founded 10,000 years before ; that subse- 

 quently, all the monuments of men, save those in Egypt, had been 

 destroyed by numerous deluges. That these inundations were 

 historically true, may be admitted, but it is a glaring inconsisten- 

 cy to except from their influence, a low, alluvial territory, that 

 would have been one of the lirst countries submerged. The dis- 

 appearance of the island of Atalantis, is another story, founded 

 in like manner, perhaps, upon an ancient geological convulsion, 

 but the details of which are due to the exuberant fancy of this 

 philosopher. In the same dialogue, is a curious approximation 

 to the modern science of chrystallography, derived by him from 

 the Pythagorean school, which, as we before adverted to, sought 

 the remote principle of all things in the power of numbers : for 

 it is stated that the four elements, air, earth, fire, and water, owe 

 their separate properties to their primitive form ; the primitive 

 chrystal being pyramidal in fire, cubical in earth, octohedral in 

 water, and icosihedral in air : lending himself to a fanciful cos- 

 mogonico-generahzation, he asserts that each of these solid primi- 

 tive forms resolves itself into tetrahedrons, so that the universe is 

 ultimately composed of triangular pyramids. His physiological 

 system, which evinces some acquaintance with anatomy, does 

 not merit much attention, and his zoology is altogether fanciful. 

 Adopting the metempsychosis of Pythagoras, he asserts that tri- 

 fling and unjust men, at their first transformation, are changed 

 into women ; the most depraved men are transformed into fishes. 

 According to this system, the affinity which exists between ani- 

 mals of diflferent classes, is attributable to each retaining some- 

 thing of its former state. However fancifully physiological and 

 zoological subjects were treated by Plato — sometimes perhaps to 

 veil doctrines it was not safe to divulge openly — there may never- 

 theless be discerned in his writings, the outlines of those three 

 principles of motion, which in our own times have been called 

 organic life, animal life, and intellectual life. 



