.s58 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



him ? Such a flate, Plato, hi the Ephiomis, fuppofes hun to have 

 been in, when he fays he was governed by Gods or Superior Intel- 

 Hgences, in the manner we govern our herds and flocks ; a notion, 

 that, I am perfuaded, Plato got in Egypt, the antient Gods of 

 which are fuppofed, by fome authors, to be Genii, or Demons of 

 Power and Intelligence iiiperior to Men. 



It may be obferved that Plato, in his third book of Laws, w^here 

 he gives an account of the ftate of Man before the inftitution of 

 civil o-overnment, does not carry matters fo far back as I do ; for 

 he fuppofes there,' a country wholly deftroyed by a flood and inun- 

 dation, which fwept away the men, with all their arts, excepting 

 only a few {hepherds on the mountains, with their flocks or herds. 

 But thefe men had the ufe of language, and of Fire ; they had alfo 

 what he calls the Plaftic Arts ; and they likewife underflood the 

 bufmefs of pafturage, and ufed the flcfh of their herds and flocks 

 for food, upon which, and what they killed in hunting, they li- 

 ved • fo that he fuppofes them to be likewife hunters. And, befides 

 all this, he makes them live a Cyclopean kind of life, as defcribed 

 by Homer, upon the tops of hills *, each family by itfelf, without 



forming 



* In this way, it appears to me, that all men of old lived before civil govern- 

 ment was well eftablifhed, and while the country was poflcfled by fmall dates, that 

 were almofl: continually at war, and ready, upon the flighted occafions, to make 

 incurfions into one another's territories. In this way, the Romans, under their 

 fif ft kin"-s, lived, inhabiting what they called Pa^i^ which were fortified places, up- 

 on the tops of hills, to which they retired when the enemies invaded the low coun- 

 try i fee Dionyfius's Antiquities, Lib. iv. Cap. 15. And that the people of Scot- 

 land antiently lived in the fame way, is evident from the ruins of fortifications up- 

 on the tops of hills flill remaining, where they fecured both themfelves and their 

 herds and flocks. In place of thefe, in later times, came the caftles of the nobility 

 and gentry, of which there was a very great number in Scodand, four or five hun- 

 -dred years ago j for they were then the only fecurity that a man had for himfelf 

 or fzimiW. 



