64 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IL 



fmooth, hard or foft^ thick or th'in^ blunt or /harp ; fo that, according 

 to this philofophy, there are fixteen quahties of body in all *. But, 

 as thefe qualities are all included under fonnt I think it is not necef- 

 fary to make them feparate and diftindl principles of nature. And, 

 accordingly, Ocellus, when he mentions them, does not fpeak oiform 

 at all ; hut lays, that they and matter conftitute the firft phyfical bo- 

 dies, which we call elements \ At the fame time, I think it proper to 

 obferve, that thefe qualities do chiefly, ii' not altogether, make the 



form of natural bodies. 



Thefe contraries, of which the nature of things, 

 ■ " rerum concordia difcors," 



is undoubtedly compofed, (how the evident neceflity of fome j^/y? mat^ 

 ter\ for, as thefe contraries fucceed and give place to one another, and, 

 as it is impoffible, according to Ocellus's obfervation '|', that contraries 

 can change inro one another, there mufl: of necefhty be fome com- 

 mon fubjedt in which the contraries cxifl: fucceflively, and which, by 

 that fuccefTion, fuffers a change :j:. 



Eur, 



* Galcs's opufcula mythologlca, p. 518. et feq. 

 t Ibidp. 519. 



\ That the univerfe is made up of contraries, ani this its iiarmony, £0 fpeak in the 

 lan'^unge of muficians, moft wonderfully varied by difcords, is a fatl that may be 

 eafily proved by induBion. Ocellus Lucanus, we fee, has endeavoured to reduce to 

 numbers thefe difcords, making in all fixteen of them. And Ariftotle, in the 5th 

 chap, of his firfl book of Metaphyfics, mentions fome other Pythagorean philofophers 

 who numbered ten combinations of oppofites, fiich as finite and infinitey even and 

 cdd^ one and multitude^ right and left, male and female, &c. And though we cannot 

 intirely truil what Ariftotle has faid of the opinions of the Pythagoreans, we arcfure, 

 at leafl, fro.n the Philebus of Plato, that they made the finite and the infinite two o£ 

 the principles of nature ; and indeed it is evident, that all the quahties of fubflances, 

 fuch as hot and cold, moift and dr'j\ are, by their nature, infinite; and, if the finite 

 were not applied to them, that is, if they were not fo tempered and meafured that 

 they might confift together, no fubftance could fubfift. And it is in this fenfc, as I 

 iaiagine, that the Pythagoreans made number the principle of all tbing,s. 



