Chap. rV. ANTIENT M K T A P H Y S I C S. 35 



and/>W;ir//>/^Jof things, they were feeking for they did not know whcit ; 

 and, therefore, fome of them ftumbled upon one kind o{ canj'e^ and fome 

 of them upon another; and there is one of them, 'vvl. \.\\c. formal caufc^ of: 

 which all the philofophers before Socrates were ignorant, if it be true 

 what Ariftotle fays, * that Socrates was the firft who defined any 



* thing *'.' It was only the material caiije that the firfl: philofophers 

 of Greece, as he fays, and particularly Thales, foiight after. Plato, 

 the fcholar of Socrates, appears to have been the firll of the Ionic 

 fchool that introduced formal caufes into natural philofophy. Thcfe 

 he called ideas^ and made them the principles of all things. Antl 

 the reafon why he infifts fo much upon this kind of caufe, and fo 

 little upon the other three, is given us by Ariftotle in the end of his 

 firft book of raetaphyfics, 'viz. ' that heftudied mathematics too much, 



* and, inftead of ufing them as th^ handmaid of Philofophy, made them 



* Philofophy itfelff*' Upon which Alexander Aphrodifienfis, in his com- 

 mentary upon Ariftotle's Metaphyfics, and Fonfcca, the learned Jefuite 

 above mentioned, have very well obferved, that mathematics inquire net 

 about any other caufe, except the formal^ negledling altogether the matd- 

 rial, the efficient^ and the fnal. Plato, however, in the Phoedo, fpeaks a 

 good deal offnal caujes ; but, in the fyftem of natural philofophy, 

 which is contained in the Timaeus, he fays very little of it. As to 

 efficient caifesy Ariftotle tells us, that Anaxagoras was the firft who 

 introduced mind as the efficient caufe of the univerfe ; for which he 

 commends him, as fpeaking like a fober man among babbling drunk- 

 ards; for he appears every where to take pleafure in decrying the 

 philofophy before him : And, with refpedt to this dodrine of caufes J, 

 he iays, ' That philofophy before his time did not well know what it 



* would be at, and did but lifp and ftammer.* 



^ There 



* Metaph. lib. i. cap. 6. 



f Tiyon TK fixdiif^eCTx T«<j vuv.v) tptX»9-e<ptUy ipiii<rKo»T»)v uXXuV X^P'* ^t""* ^W ve^yuxT$vt<r- 



iui; pag. 854. edit. Uu Val. As he is fpeaking there of the iIo£lrine of ideas, the 

 obfervation is undoubtedly meant to apply to Plato, and to his followers who efpoufed 

 that dodtrine ; and I think may very well be applied to fome philofophers of our age, 

 who make mathematics the whole of philofophy, 

 X Lib. I. Metaphyf. z^i^/z^. 



