M ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book III. 



give It life and motion : And, indeed, it would be abfurd to fuppofe 

 that the general ideas, of fo much greater excellency, that they con- 

 tain the particular, fhould not have a feparate exiftence by them- 

 felves, as well as the particular. The ideas in this feparate ftate of 

 exiftence, when they were unmixed with matter, and were the pure 

 Tcc ovrcjg ovrct^ as Ariftotle calls them, our minds, in our more per- 

 fed: ftate, perceived, and were converfant with them : Whereas, 

 in this ftate of our exiftence, we are condemned as it were to dig 

 them out of Matter, in which they are to be confidered as buried, 

 and of the mixture and impurity of which they muft retain a great 

 deal, as they are perceived by us. 



In this way of conceiving the objects of knowledge, there is net 

 only more reality in our knowledge, but we perceive more clearly 

 what is the foundation of the truth of all fyllogiling and reafoning, 

 that the more general idea contains the individual or the lefs gene- 

 ral J fo that we underftand perfedly what Ariftotle calls \v ''oXca \(vaty 

 or «ara t/io? scxTayo^iKrduiy and which he makes to be the founda- 

 tion of his whole dodtrine of Syllogifm. Whereas, according to Arif- 

 totle's notion of ideas, the particular ideas are fo far from being derived 

 from the general, that, as I have obferved, the general, as he fays, are 

 derived from the particular, being formed by our minds from the par- 

 ticular ; the confequence of which is, that in things created, that is 

 produced from fupreme intelligence, there is no order or precedency, 

 neither firft norlaft, nor any thing befides a confuled jumble of various 

 things together, among which there is no connexion by nature, nor 

 any, except that which the human mind forms by arranging them 

 into genufes and fpeciefes. Now, in a perfed: fyftem, fuch as we 

 muft fuppofe that of the univerfe to be, things muft be conneded 

 with one another, and no thing detached and fnigle by itfelf. 



According, therefore, to Plato's dodrine of ideas, the univerfe is 

 a moft perfed fyftem, being not only derived from one firft caufc, 



but 



