48 NOVUM OROANUM 



did not (that we are aware) open schools, but betook them 

 selves to the investigation of truth with greater silence and 

 with more severity and simplicity, that is, with less affecta 

 tion and ostentation. Hence in our opinion they acted more 

 advisedly, however their works may have been eclipsed in 

 course of time by those lighter productions which better 

 correspond with and please the apprehensions and passions 

 of the vulgar; for time, like a river, 87 bears down to us that 



sippus. He was called the Column of the Portico, a name givc|i to the Stoical 

 School from Zeno, its founder, who had given his lessons under the portico. 



Carneades, born about 215, died in 130. He attached himself to Chrysip- 

 pus, and sustained with eclat the scepticism of the academy. The Athenians* 

 sent him with Critolaus and Diogenes as ambassador to Rome, where he at 

 tracted the attention of his new auditory by the subtilty of his reasoning, and 

 the fluency and vehemence of his language. Before Galba and Cato the Censor, 

 he harangued with great variety of thought and copiousness of diction in praise 

 of justice. The next day, to establish his doctrine of the uncertainty of human 

 knowledge, he undertook to refute all his arguments. He maintained with the 

 New Academy, that the senses, the imagination, and the understanding fre 

 quently deceive us, and therefore cannot be infallible judges of truth, but that 

 from the impressions produced on the mind by means of the senses, we infer 

 appearances of truth or probabilities. Nevertheless, with respect to the conduct 

 of life, Carneades held that probable opinions are a sufficient guide. 



Xeuophanes, a Greek philosopher, of Colophon, born in 556, the founder of 

 the Eleatic school, which owes its fame principally to Parmenides. Wild in his 

 opinions about astronomy, he supposed that the stars were extinguished every 

 morning, and rekindled at night ; that eclipses were occasioned by the tempo 

 rary extinction of the sun, and that there were several suns for the convenience 

 of the different climates of the earth. Yet this man held the chair of philoso 

 phy at Athens for seventy years. 



Philolaus, a Pythagorean philosopher of Crotona, B.C. 374. He first sup 

 ported the diurnal nwtion of the earth round its axis, and its annual motion 

 round the sun. Cicero (Acad. iv. 39) has ascribed this opinion to the Syracu- 

 san philosopher Nicetas, and likewise to Plato. From this passage, it is most 

 probable that Copernicus got the idea of the system he afterward established. 

 Bacon, in the Advancement of Human Learning, charges Gilbert with restoring 

 the doctrines of Philolaus, because he ventured to support the Copcruican 

 theory. Ed. 



31 Bacon is equally conspicuous for the use and abuse of analogical illustra 

 tions. The levity, as Stuart Mill very properly observes, by which substances 



