Chap. XII. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 173 



with the invention and pradicc of the ncceflary arts of life, nor 

 even of the arts of pleafure and ornament, hut he afpiied toTcicnce; 

 And what he firft ftudied of that kind was, as was natural, tlic great 

 book of Nature, which was always before his eyes, and from wiiich 

 he learned that there were many things which had a great fimilarity 

 to one another; and having difcovercd what that limilarity was, he 

 reduced them to certain claffes, which we call genufes and fptciefes, 

 and fo made otie of the many^ which is a very proper definition given 

 by Plato of a general idea. And in this he followed the order of Na- 

 ture; for, as I have obferved elfewhere*, all things in Nature coufift 

 of the one and the many. And here, i think, we cuimot fufHciently 

 admire the wifdom and goodnefs of God. who has fo arranged the 

 infinite number of things, which we perceive in Nature, as to reduce 

 them all to thofe unities wtiich we call genufes and fjieciefes, by 

 which we are enabled to comprehend them, which ctherwife it 

 would have been impolfible for us to do. Whereas, by the order in 

 which God has been plcafed to put them, we can not only compre- 

 hend them, but make a fyftem of fcience of them, and a moft won- 

 derful fyftem it is, formed by Archytas the Pythagorian philofopher, 

 and publifhed by Ariftotle under the name of Categories^ of which 

 I have fpoken a great deal elfewhere f. 



This union of the one and the many^ which is the foundation of 

 all fcience, not only takes place in genufes and fpeciefes, but in every 

 individual thing, even individual objedls of fenfe, of which, as I 

 have fhown, we form our firft ideas; for every one of thefe objedls 

 is a colle<3:ion of different qualities, which joined together make 

 one. In (hort, every objedt in the univerfe is one and many, and 

 even the Deity is one in three and three in otie. And in this way 

 we may obfervc that our perceptions of the objedls of fenfe are 

 very different from thofe of the Brute : For he has no general ideas 



of 

 • Page 45. — III. f Page 80.. 



