322 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book III. 



Arlftotle ; and, indeed, it is to me a proof, that even the memory 

 of antient philofophy is in hazard of being loft among us. As to 

 Plato, the chief end and general fcope of his philofophy is, to raife the 

 mind from material and particular things, which he confiders as ha- 

 ving no exiHence, properly fpeaking, but as in a conftant flux and vi- 

 cifTitude of generation and corruption, to gcncrsih or ideas j (a v^rord, 

 which, as I have elfewhere obferved *, he borrowed from the Pytha- 

 gorean School,) confidering thefe alone as truly exifting, and the only 

 proper objeds of fcience t. And, as to Ariftotle, the diflindion be- 

 twixt fenfe and intelled, particulars and generals, the former being 

 the objeds of fcnfe, and the latter of intelled, runs through his whole 

 philofophy; and, particularly, is the foundation of his fv ft em of lo- 

 gic, and of the fyllogifm, which he tells us, again and again, cannot 

 be without general propofitions. And it is plain, from almoft every 

 page of his works, that he had no notion that there could be demon- 

 ftration or fcience of any kind, without generals. And it is evident, 

 from his fetting the book of Categories at the head of his philofophi- 

 cal works, that he thought the knowledge of the moft general ideas 

 a neceflary introduction to philofophy* 



That a man who believed nothing, and afFeded even to doubt of 

 his own exiftence, and who, befides, had no regard to religion, either 

 natural or revealed, ftiould argue againft the exiftence of ideas, and, 

 by allowing us only fenfations, more or lefs lively, deprefs us to the 

 rank of brutes, is not fo much to be wondered at : But, that a Chrif- 



tian, 



* Origin and Progrcfs of Language, Vol. I. p. ti6. edit. 2. 



t It was for this reafon that he confidered not the corporeal man, orhorfe, as the real 

 man or horfe, bccaufe they were conftantly changing, and, at laft, periflied, or, at 

 leaft, were diflblved; but the idea of the man, or the horfe, he faid, was the thing i 

 which, therefore, he called the ecura-xtt^u-xci or the avTo-'iTTTrc;, that is, the 7nan itjelfy 

 or the horfe itfelf'y an expreflion which I know has beert much ridiculed by matcriali:!*, 

 both antiLnt and modern, but which, I think, a proper expreffion, importing that di- 

 ftinftion betwixt corporeal and intelle^ual things, which is the foundation of all tro: 

 philofophy. 



