I40 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book III. 



AS I hive fald fo much of Vinue In the preceding chapter, and 

 explained the definition ^iv?n of it by x\ri'lotle, I think it will 

 not be improper, in this chapter, to i\y foniething of Morals in ge- 

 neral, being a fubje^Il of the grcatcH: importance : For, upon good 

 morals the happinefs, not only of private men, but of all civil focie- 

 ties, depends; and the two fciences of Ethics, or Morals, and Politics, 

 were imderftood by the Greeks to be fo much connected, that they 

 were both called ToX<r;x;j, the name being taken from the greater 

 fubjeit to which they both applied, namely, Political Society. It 

 will, therefore, be proper to treat of them in this volume, the chief 

 fubjedl of which is the ftate of man in civil fociety. 



Pythagoras, as we are informed by Ariftotle *, was the firft who 

 began to inquire concerning Virtue ; for before him it appears, that 

 the philofophers only ftudied" naturar things. He, explaining vir- 

 tue, as he did every thing elfe, by Numbers, faid, that virtue was a 

 number ta-aKi? ta-on What he meant by this I do not know; nor 

 am I folhcitous to difcover, becaufe I am well convinced of the truth 

 of what Arillotle fays upon this occafion, that virtue does not be- 

 long to the fcience of numbers. After him Socrates inquired more 

 concerning virtue and to better purpofe; but neither did he come to 

 the truth, though, as he faid himfelf, he fpent his whole life inquiring 

 what juftice, temperance, and the other virtues were: For he faid, that 

 all virtue was fcience; placing it by that means wholely in the intellec- 

 tual part of the mind, and negleding the virtues of the irrational, that 

 is, the animal part;— in fhort, excluding from his fyftem manners and 

 paffions, the natural ^off^v '^M '^o «^Xov, which, as we have faid, is the 

 very foundation of virtue, and of every thing that is formed by cuftom 



and 



■^ Mag. Moral. Lib. i. Cap. i. & Cap. 35. 



