FABLE OF CUPID. 49 



most things with the authority of antiquity. In the first 

 place then, Cupid is described as a certain person, and to 

 him are attributed infancy, wings, arrows, and other attri 

 butes, concerning which we will afterward speak sepa 

 rately. But this we assume in the meanwhile, that the 

 ancients laid down the primitive matter (such as can be 

 the origin of things) with a form and properties, not ab 

 stract, potential and informal. And certainly that matter 

 which is stripped and passive seems altogether an inven 

 tion of the human mind, and to have sprung thence, for 

 those things are mostly present to the human understand 

 ing which it most imbibes, and with which itself is most 

 moved. Hence it is that forms as they are called seem to 

 exist more than either matter or action, because the one is 

 hid, the other glides before us ; the one is not so strongly 

 impressed, the other constantly inheres. But forms on 

 the other hand are deemed evident and lasting, so that the 

 primitive and common matter seems as it were an acces 

 sory, and to be in the place of a support to them ; but 

 every sort of action only an emanation from the form, and 

 forms therefore to be in every respect worthy of the higher 

 rank. And hence also seems to be derived the kingdom of 

 forms and ideas in essences, by the addition of a kind of 

 phantastic matter. Some things moreover have &amp;lt; grown out 

 of this superstition; (from want of judgment having, as 

 might have been expected, followed this error) abstract 

 ideas and their powers have been introduced ; with such 

 confidence and authority that this troop of dreamers had 

 nearly overpowered the more sober class of thinkers. But 

 these follies have for the most part disappeared, although 

 one person in our age, with more daring than advantage, 

 made it his endeavour to raise and prop them up when 

 they were of themselves on the decline. I think however 

 that it can to an unprejudiced person be easily shown 

 how, contrary to reason, abstract matter was made into an 

 element. It arose thus ; men supposed that forms endued 

 with action subsisted by themselves, but none thought that 

 matter thus subsisted by itself; not even those who con 

 sidered it an element; and it seemed unreasonable arid 

 contrary to the nature of an inquiry upon the elements of 

 things to make entities out of mere imaginations. And it 

 is not our object to search how we can most conveniently 

 conceive of the nature of entities or distinguish them, but 

 what are in truth the first and simplest possible of all enti 

 ties, from which all others are derived. But the first ones 

 VOL. xv. E 



