Chap. XIL ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 489 



to truth that eter7iity and immutability T^hich is fo much talked of, 

 but fo little underftood ; for, as I obferved a little before, if no other 

 being had any perception of truth, except man, and if there were no 

 other pattern or archetype of it but this material world, in confl-ant 

 motion and change, it might indeed be faid to be fomething realy and 

 not merely ideal or notional ; but it could not, I think, be faid, with 

 much propriety, to be eternal and immutable. 



Nor could it, I think, deferve thefe epithets, if what Des Cartes, 

 and fome other French philofophers, who pretend to be Theiils, have 

 faid, were true, that truth and falfehood are, by their nature, arbitra- 

 ry, depending altogether upon the will of the Deity, lb that it was in 

 his power to have made truth falfehood, or falfehood truth. But they 

 might as well have maintained, that it was in the power of the Deity 

 to change his nature, and be other than what he is, a felf-exiftent 

 Being, neceffarily exiftlng, and, in every refped, unchangeable* 

 * without change, or fhadow of change ;' for thefe ideas of his mind, 

 from which all truth is derived, are part of his nature and effence, 

 and therefore unchangeable. 



But, is not beauty fomething different from truth ? and is not God 

 the fountain of the one as well as the other ? — And firfl, as to the 

 difference betwixt truth and beauty^ there is truth in a fingle propoli- 

 tlon, but no beauty ; for, in order to give beauty to truthy there muft 

 be a combination of proportions mutually conneded and dependent 

 one upon the other. In (hort, there muft be a fyftem, of which the 

 mind perceiving the union, is, at the fame time, ftruck with thai niofl 

 agreeable of all perceptions, which we call beauty* And the greater 

 variety there is in this fyftem, the greater the number of parts, and 

 the n^.ore various their connections and dependencies upon one ano- 

 ther, the greater the beauty, provided the mind can dlftindly com- 

 prehend the whole, and the feveral parts, in one united view. 



Q.qq Of 



