€hap. X. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 205 



but for other reafons, not that of confounding the races of men*. 

 The opinion of the Egyptians was very different ; for they made 

 nature principal and fundamental in the art of government, as well 

 as in other arts. For this reafon they fet apart and diftinguifhed 

 from the reft of the people, with whom they did not intermix by 

 marriages, a race of men who were called by the Greeks the Priefts 

 of Egypt, becaufe they had the charge of that principal part of govern- 

 ment, — religion. But their name in the country was, as Herodotus 

 tells us, nyp^(f f, which, as he interpets it, fignifies xa.Xoi;xccya.So;, 

 that is a man who has worth and goodnefs, and at the fame time, 

 .a high fenfe of what is beautiful and becoming in fentiments and 

 adions, without which no charader can be perfed. Thefe nien, 

 thus deftined by God and nature to govern by their councils their 

 fellow creatures, being fet apait from the reft of the people, were 

 the counfellors of the King?, that is, they were the ivijliom of the 

 nation. At the fame time, they had the care of religion, without 



which 



• De Republica. Lib. 2. in initio I am fufprifed that Ariftotle, in tliis work upon 



government, fliould give no preference to birth in the government of a ftate, when 

 he has faid, in his 7th Book De Republica cap. 13. that the goodnefs of men depends 

 upon three things, nature, cujlom or hahity and reafon. Now, that the parents of 

 whom men are produced, muft have a great influence upon their nature, he has told 

 us in fo many words, where he fays, that nobility is the virtue of the race. (Ibid. Lib. 

 3. Cap. 13.) Aod as I have obfcrved (p. 184. of this volume) the word which the 

 Greeks have for Nobility, viz. tuyifna, implies that. Yet in the conftitution of his beft 

 government, which he calls voXtrua, he makes no diftin£lion of men according to their 

 birth, nor gives any pre-eminence to the virtue of the race : And in his long chapter 

 upon marriage, (Lib. 8. Cap. 16.) he fays nothing about preventing the mixture of 

 the better races of men with the worfe. 



■f- I think, it is not unlikely, that the name Bramin, which the Indians give to their 

 Priefts and philoibphers, may be a corruption of the word n^^afifs : For by changing the 

 jT into another labial confonant, viz. /3, which is a change very common, the word be- 

 comes Bv^iixii, and by leaving out the vowel v, which is alfo not uncommon in lan- 

 guages that pafs from one country to another, the word becomes Boufm. And La 

 Croze, iu his Hiftory of the Chriftianity of India, has informed us, that, in the Iflaad 

 of Ceylon, they are called by a name which comes ftill nearer to the word Bramin. 



