66 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book 11. 



creature, muft of confequence adt, fometimes as a mere animal, and 

 fometimes as an intelleaual Being. And as it is only by their ac- 

 tions and operations that things are diftinguifhed, it is no wonder 

 that Man and Brute fhould be confounded by thbfe who cannot 

 think juftly, and difcriminate accurately. 



In the preceding Volume, I have endeavoured to fhow, that it is 

 by Ideas that the Intelledlual Nature operates, whereas the Senfitive 

 operates only by Senfation ; fo that, if we cannot rightly diftinguifti 

 betwixt Senfations and Ideas, we can never properly make the diftinc- 

 tion betwixt Man and Brute. 



I do not know that thefe two were confounded by any anticnt 

 philofopher ; I am fure, at leaft, they are not in the philofophy of 

 Plato and Ariftotle. The word Idea comes from the moft antient 

 fchool of philofophy in Europe, I mean the Pythagorean, and, if 

 we fuppofe it, as I do, to be the fame with the Egyptian School, the 

 moft antient in the world ; for it is ufed by Timaeus the Locrian, 

 in that moft valuable work of his, ftill preferved to us, De Anima 

 Mundi. The fenfe in which it is ufed by that author is the true 

 etymological fenfe of the word, denoting thtform of the thing, not 

 that form which is feen by the corporeal eye, but what is feen by a 

 much purer and nobler eye, the eye of the Mind. In this fenfe it is 

 ufed by all the philofophers of the Schools of Plato and of Ariftotle j 

 and it has been fo ufed by me throughout this whole work, and in 

 my other work upon the Origin and Progrefs of Language. The 

 more antient Englifh writers, even as late down as Bifhop Wilkins, 

 who writes that grand philofophical work upon Language, do not ufe 

 the term at all, but, in place of it, the word notion. Mr Locke was 

 the fiift author in England, as far as I know, that made ufe of it ; 

 but, not being a fcholar, and altogether unlearned in antient philofo- 

 phy, he has ufed it moft abfurdly, to denote the perceptions of Senfe, 



which 



