xiv PREFACE. 



who, from their Inftitutions, appear to have been the "wifeft people 

 that ever exifted ; or if I could believe that it might have comi- 

 nued fo long among the generality of the people, it is impoflible, I 

 think, to fuppofe that Philofophy, as well as other occupations, 

 being appropriated to a certain race of men, and thefc the beft in 

 the country, inch a Philofophy fhould have continued any confider- 

 able time among men fet apart from the reft of the people, living 

 together in colleges, and carrying on Science and Philofophy from 

 father to fon for thoufands of years. They muft theretore have foon 

 learned what they taught Thales, that Body could not move itfelf, 

 and that even the Bodies we call inanimate are moved by Mind. 

 From thefe inferior Minds they would naturally rife to the vegetable, 

 from the vegetable to the animal, and from the animal to the intel- 

 ledual. They would difcover likewife, that there muft be many 

 other Intelligences in the univerfe fuperior to men, and accordingly 

 Thales, as I have faid, learned among them that the world was full 

 of Daemons, by which the bufmefs of Nature was carried on ; but, 

 at the fame time perceiving that all Nature various as it is, was but 

 one fyftem, they would be convinced that there was but one Supreme 

 Intelligence and Sovereign Archited: of this wondrous frame ; and I 

 doubt not of their having, in procefs of time, difcovered that from 

 the Supreme God, the Father of all things, there was a proceffion or 

 emanation of two Divine Beings; the one the Principle of Intelligence 

 the other of Vitality. This was the Trinity of Plato, which, I have 

 no doubt, he brought with him from Egypt, or learned in the School 

 of Pythagoras. 



I come now to fpeak of Pythagoras, who was initiated long be- 

 fore Plato into this Sublime Philofophy, and was the iiviX^ as Jam- 

 blichus in his Life tells us, who raifed the Minds of the Greeks 

 above Matter, and called them to the contemplation of Mind and of 

 things Divine. He was undoubtedly the greateft philofopher that 



7 ever 



