84 A N T I E N T METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



If it be faid that, in this way, I make a great variety of mixjds, dif- 

 fering much from one another in their quahties and properties, and of 

 degrees of excellence very different, my anfwer is, that I admit the 

 truth of tlie obfcrvation ; but, I fay, that my fyftem is, tor that, the 

 more agreeable to the general analogy of nature, ot which the variety 

 is infinite, and the fulnefs and perfection as great as the variety ; for 

 it is well faid, bv one of Ariftotle's commentators of the Alexandrian 

 fcliool, ' 'I hat the Univerfe is the complement ot 2\\ joniu or fpe- 

 * ciefes'^,'' containing in it all the pclFible fpeciefes of things, tvery 

 thing, however, in it, is cither body or miyid. But, oi bodies^ wh^t prodi- 

 gious varieties do we fee, and how different from one another in kind, 

 in beauty, and in excellence ? How much more perfect is the organic- 

 zed body, than a lump of unorganized brute matter? Among organized 

 bodies ihemfelves, how much more delicate the ftru6ture, and accurate the 

 conformation of one than of another ? And, among the unorganized^ what 

 a wnde interval betwixt the fubtile eledtric fire and the maffy reck, the 

 diamond and the clod ? and how many different kinds, and different 

 degrees of excellence, lie betwixt thefe extremes ? Now, nature would 

 be imperfed, and, as it were, mutilated, if there was not, at leafl, the 

 fame variety in what is principal in nature, mindy that there is in 

 body, which is fo much inferior in dignity and excellence. 



And here it may be obferved, how full and compleat, according to 

 my fyftem, the fcale of nature is in this matter of 77iind, and how it ari- 

 fes, by juft degrees, one ftep above another. Firft, there is that mind 

 which fimply moves body in a certain determined diredtion. This is 

 the loweft kind of mind, of leaft variety and excellence, and below 

 what the antients called -^vyji^ or life ; yet it is effential, according to 

 Ariftotlc, to a phyfical body. Next to that is the mind which moves 

 the vegetable with much greater variety, producing, by its various mo- 

 tions, the nutrition, growth, and proj^agation of the plant : This is 

 what is known by the name of the vegetable life. Next to it is the 



animdi 



* Tr>.ti(aiux le-Ti ruv h\ui I Ketr^t;, Joaniics Philoponus's introdu(flion to his commentti- 

 ry upon Ariftotle*s books, Dc Anima. 



