154 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IIL 



ch-'.nic, who applies a foot or a yard to the length of two bodies, and 

 finds that both agree exactly to that meafure, and are neithei* long- 

 er nor ihorter, can give a reafon why he believes the bodies to be 

 of equal length, not knowing the axiom of Euclid, " That two things, 

 " which are equal to a third thing, are equal to one another." 



By this difcovery Ariftotle, as I have obferved elfewhere *, has 

 anfwered the queflion, which Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor, 

 afked of our Saviour, What truth is f The anfwer to which ap- 

 pears now to be fo obvious, that I am perfuaded Pilate would not 

 have aiked it as a queftion, which he no doubt thought very diffi- 

 cult to be anfwered, if he had not ftudied the logic of Ariftotle, the 

 defign of which was, as the author tells us, to (how what truth or 

 certainty was. But whoever has ftudied that work, muft know it 

 to be of fo difficult folution, (though, from what 1 have faid, it ap- 

 pears now to be fo eafy and obvious,) that, as I have obferved in the 

 preface above quoted, it could not have been the invention of Arif- 

 totle, or of any one man, but he muft have learned it from the Py- 

 thagorean books which he had ftudied; and it muft have been 

 brought, by Pythagoras, from Egypt, the parent country of all arts 

 and fciences; And, as the difcovery went from Egypt to India, 

 where, at this day, the fyllogiim is both underftood and pradifed t, 

 we are not to wonder that it fhould have come to Greece. But, 

 though Ariftotle got the principles and materials from the Pythago- 

 rean books, he may have compiled and digefted them better than 

 ever they were in thofe books. One thing appears to be certain, 

 that, before Ariftotle, the philofophers of Greece had no fyftem of 

 Logic, whatever the Pythagoreans, in Italy, might have had. The 

 Greek philofophers, therefore, before his time, and even his mafter 

 Plato, muft have reafoned as a boy or a vulgar man fpeaks, who 

 may do that very well, if they have been educated among people that 



fpeak 



* Vol. 1.' of this work, p. 374. 



f Vol. 4. p. 312. and vol. 3. p. lix. of preface. 



