106 DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY 



getting out of the difficulty than by having recourse 

 to endless combinations of circular motions to pre- 

 serve their ideal perfection. 



(98.) Undoubtedly among the Greek philosophers 

 were many men of transcendent talents and virtues, 

 the ornaments of their species, and justly entitled to 

 the veneration of all posterity; but regarded as a body 

 they can hardly be considered otherwise than as a 

 knot of disputatious candidates for popular favour, 

 too busy in maintaining their ascendency over their 

 followers and admirers, by an ostentatious display of 

 superior knowledge, to have the leisure (had they 

 always the inclination) to base their pretensions on 

 a deep and sure foundation, and yet too sensible of 

 the disgrace and inconvenience of failure, not to 

 defend their dogmas, however shallow, when once 

 promulgated, against their keen and sagacious oppo- 

 nents, by every art of sophism or appeal to passion. 

 Hence the crudities and chimerical views with 

 which their systems of philosophy, both natural and 

 moral, were overloaded; their endless disputes 

 about verbal subtleties, and, last and worst, the 

 proud assumption with which they sheltered igno- 

 rance and indolence under the screen of unintelli- 

 gible jargon or dogmatical assertion. Perhaps, how- 

 ever, this character applies rather to the later than 

 to the earlier of the Greek philosophers. The spirit 

 of rational enquiry into nature seems, if we can 

 judge from the uncertain and often contradictory 

 notices handed down to us of their tenets, to have 

 been far more alive, and less warped by this vain 

 and arrogant turn, then than at a later period. We 

 know not now what was the precise meaning 



