Ixviii PREFACE. 



tife upon Arithmetic, in which the nature and properties of Num* 

 bers are inveftigated after the Pythagorean method, and a Science 

 made of Arithmetic, which, as I have faid, has not been done by 

 any of our modern phllofophers *. 



Thus it appears that, in the Alexandrian School, thofe vain dif^ 

 putes betwixt the followers of Plato and Ariftotle, w^hich had pre-!- 

 vailed fo much before, were entirely laid afide, the two Philofophics 

 joined, and traced up to their fource the School of Pythagoras, and 

 further back ftill, even to Orpheus,, and what was to be found of 

 Philofophy ftill in Egypt. 



In the laft place we may obferve of what advantage Philofophy 

 may be to thofe who profefs it, even in the worft of times ; for 

 there could be no times worfe than thofe in which the phllofophers 

 of the Alexandrian School lived : They may be faid to have lived 

 among the ruins of the antient world, I mean the Roman empire^ 

 which was then in the laft period of its decline, the internal ftate of 

 it being as much difordered as poflible, while it was torn to pieces^ 

 and its provinces difmembered, by the incurfions of barbarous na- 

 tions from the Eaft, North, and South. In this moft miferable ftate 

 of public affairs, and when the general corruption of manners muft 

 have made even private life very uncomfortable, we fee thofe phl- 

 lofophers enjoying their Philefophy in perfe(^ tranquillity; and if 

 there had happened a convulfion in Nature as great as in the affairs 

 of Men, they might have faid with the philofopher in Horace, 

 Si fraEiiis illahatiir orbis^ 



Impavldinn ferknt rii'ina. 



They 



* See the eulogium of this Author by Jamblichus, in Fabricius's Bthllotheca^ Vol. IV, 

 p. 6. There lived alfo about the fame time another Pythagorean philofopher, of the 

 name of Mod^ratuSj frequently quoted by Simplicius in his Commentaries upon 

 Ariftotle. 



