352 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IV. 



Natural Philofophy ; for, when he departs from it,hc falls, wc fee, into 

 very great errors. Thefe errors the Platonifts have avoided, by ma- 

 king Mind the Author of all Motions in the Univerfe, thofe on Earth 

 as well as thofe in Heaven, as Proclus has obferved in a paflage 

 which I have elfewhere quoted * ; and, therefore, it muft be ad- 

 mitted by the greateft admirers of Ariftotle, that Plato is more the 

 Philofopher of Mind than Ariftotle, — But to return to Dreams. 



I come now to the fyftem of Synefius t upon this fubjed. He 

 was a firm believer in Divination by Dreams ; and, had he lived in' 



this 



• Vol. I. p. 208. 



t This Synefmi was originally of Cyrene, a Lacedaemonian colony in Africa ^ 

 and he was of heroic race^ being of the family of Hercules, the nobleft family in the 

 world, and which produced more Kings and Heroes than any other that ever ex- 

 jfted. His defcer»t from Euryfthcnes, the firft King of Sparta, and the fifth from 

 Hercules, was vouched by the public records of the city : Synefius, Epijlle 57. If 

 •we fhould doubt of the proof of a genealogy which goes back into ages of fo remote 

 antiquity, one thing is certain, that there is an elevation both in his thoughts and Aylc, 

 that is worthy of a man of the higheft rank, as well as greateft learning, and lets him 

 much above all the writers of his age. He addifted himfclf to the Platonic Phi- 

 lofophy, which, as it is well known, was the philofophy of the primitive Chriftian 

 church, and which beft fuited fuch an exalted genius as his. He was fo famous 

 for his learning and philofophy, that the Chriftians of thofe days were at very great 

 pains to make a convert of him, and were fo zealous to bring him within the pale 

 of their church, that they made him an offer of the bifliopric of his native place, 

 Ptolemais, (a city near Cyrene, and which had come in the place of it, the antient 

 city being thf-n in ruins,) even before he believed in the refurredlion of the dead, as 

 Euagoras informs us, which he was, with much difficulty, perfuaded to accept of. 

 He flourifhcd under Arcadius the Emperor, to whom he has addrefled an ad- 

 jnirable oration, (for he was a rhetorician, as well as a philofopher), entitled in^i 

 ^utrtfifiaf, in which he fays he fpoke with more freedom to the Emperor than any 

 Greek before him had ever done ; and, indeed, it appears from the oration itfelf, 

 that he animadverted with great freedom upon the errors of his government This 

 treatife of his, »-sg< tivTrnuy, has been thought worthy of a Commentary by one Nice- 



phoruSj 



