xl PREFACE. 



tain, that, from a Pythagorean author, the moft antlent of whom we 

 have any thing extant, I mean Ocellus Lucanus, Ariftotle has taken his 

 notion of the Eternity of the world, and that there was no beginning 

 of motion ; and alfo the notion of a fifth Element. And from 

 another Pythagorean writer, called Eccelus^ he has taken his whole 

 treatife of Generation and Corruption^ almoft tranfcribing it *. 



But though I do not think that he has added any thing to 

 natural Philofophy, he certainly added a great deal to natural 

 Hiftory ; and his Hiftory of Animals is, I believe, the beft book 

 upon the fubjedt that has been produced fmce his time. It was 

 his pupil Alexander, who enabled him to make fo great a colledion 

 of fadis. And there is an anonymous writer of the Life of Pytha- 

 goras t, who, in the end of his work tells us, that Alexander, at his 

 defire, fent men to the highefl: parts of Ethiopia, where, I fuppofe, 

 no Greek had ever been before, in order to difcover the caufe of the 

 overflowing of the Nile ; and they difcovered, what is undoubtedly 

 the truth, that the overflowing was produced by great rains which 

 fall upon the high mountains of Ethiopia in the middle of fummer. 



As to Morals^ I do not think he has added any thing of value 

 to what he and his mailer learned from the Pythagorean School, 

 from which he has taken one thing that is not to be found in Plato ; 

 viz. that the virtues, confift in a middle betwixt two extremes, 

 excefs upon the one fide, and defeEl upon the other ; for this doctrine 

 is exprefsly laid down in the treatife of Theages above mentioned 

 concerning virtue, and illuftrated by examples J. There is one 

 virtue, of which he gives an account, very different indeed from that 

 given by the Pythagoreans, and from them by his mafl:er Plato, 



but 



* See the Authorities for this in Gale's Colleclion, p. 501 and 502. 



t It is publiflied along with Jamblichus and Porphyry their Lives of Pythagoras. 



X Gale's Colledion, p. 693, 694. 



