264 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book III. 



try may have produced, I think it was itnpoffible that Egypt 

 could have maintained fuch a number of inhabitants as made it the 

 beft peopled country, I believe, for its extent that ever was in the 

 world, and, at the fame time, have enabled the Egyptians to fend 

 colonies to fo many different countries, fome of them very remote, 

 fuch as India, and in that way to people a confiderable part of the 

 earth. Even in Egypt, therefore, it was neceffary to ftir the earth by 

 ploughing and harrowing, and fo raife it up, expofe it to the air, and 

 pulverife it to a certain degree, and at the fame time enrich it with dung 

 or with an addition of pulverifed earth. And if it was neceffary in 

 Egypt, with fuch a foil, fuch a climate, and fuch a river, how much 

 more neceffary muft it be in other countries of this earth — So that 

 without agriculture, the earth could not have been peopled, nor civil 

 fociety of any value formed. It is true that man may live by hunt- 

 in"- and by pafturage ; and in that way the Tartars live, and fome 

 other nations : But among them there is not what can properly be 

 called civil fociety, nor any regular government ; fo that it is im- 

 poffible that among them any arts or fciences could be invented. 

 Agriculture, therefore, may be faid to be the parent of civil fociety : 

 And accordingly Ceres was worfhipped among the antients, not only 

 as the goddefs of agriculture, but of laws and government. 



There is another art invented by man, and which was of abfolute 

 neceffity for carrying on the bufmefs of civil life : The art I mean 

 is arithmetic, or the art of numbers. Of this I have fpoken in p. 

 17 1 and 172 of this volume ; to which I will only add here, that 

 as number is a multitude^ confiftlng of an infinite number oi monads^ 

 without any bounds fet to them by nature, it was a work, I think, 

 of great art, to fet bounds to this infinity, and to make what the 

 Greeks called ttXjj^o? ufuru.ii/ov^ without which numbers could have 

 been of no ufe. That this was a matter of difficulty, is, I think, evi- 

 dent from the nature of the thing: But it is likewife proved from fadl, 



by 



