170 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book III. 



Thus I diftinguiih particular from general ideas, and both from 

 abftrad: ideas : Whereas Mr Locke makes no diftindion betwixt 

 particular and general ideas ; and, in his language, ideas^ abjlradf 

 ideas ^ and general ideas ^ denote all the fame thing. 



And here we may obferve how properly Plato has defined an idea, 

 to be one of the many; for even the idea of a particular obje£t is a 

 feledion of one or more qualities of the objed:, out of many that 

 may belong to it. The general idea is one of many more-, and the 

 number, of which the idea makes one, ftill increafes, when the fpe- 

 cies rifes to a genus, and that genus to a higher genus, and fo on 

 from genus to • genus, till they come to the higheft genus of all, 

 Thefe have been clafled, and the clafTes numbered in that great 

 work of the Pythagorean philofopher Archytas, entitled by him, 

 verv properly, Ile^/ roy ravroc^ or. Of the Ujiiverfe ; and which, as. I 

 have faid elfewhere *, is, in my opinion, the greateft difcovery in 

 philofophy that ever was made; for it makes a fyftem of the whole 

 unlverfe, and divides it into a certain number of parts. But, as to 

 the fubordinate genufes, and the fpeciefes below them, no body hither- 

 to has attempted to number them : And, with refped to the indi- 

 viduals contained in the fpeciefes, they are certainly infinite in num- 

 ber, at leafl with refped to our capacity. Whoever, therefore, looks 

 around him with any degree of attention, and furveys the infinite 

 number of objeds which he fees in the Heavens above and on the 

 Earth below, and particularly on the Earth, with which we are beft 

 acquainted, where there are the three great kingdoms, the Animal, 

 the Vegetable, and the Mineral, with all their dilTerent properties 

 and qualities, 



Frigida ubi pugnant calldis, humentla ficcis, 

 MoUia cum duris, fine pondere habeniia pondus, 



as the antlents faid of their Chaos, will be amazed, if he is fo far 



advanced 



* Vol. 4. p. 67. 



