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A third set, from their faith and religious veneration, intro- 

 duce theology and traditions; the absurdity of some among 

 them having proceeded so far as to seek and derive the sciences 

 from spirits and genii. There are, therefore, three sources of 

 error and three species of false philosophy ; the sophistic, em- 

 piric, and superstitious. 



63. Aristotle affords the most eminent instance of the first ; 

 for he corrupted natural philosophy by logic thus he formed 

 the world of categories, assigned to the human soul, the noblest 

 of substances, a genus determined by words of secondary oper- 

 ation, treated of density and rarity (by which bodies occupy a 

 greater or lesser space), by the frigid distinctions of action and 

 power, asserted that there was a peculiar and proper motion 

 in all bodies, and that if they shared in any other motion, it was 

 owing to an external moving cause, and imposed innumerable 

 arbitrary distinctions upon the nature of things ; being every- 

 where more anxious as to definitions in teaching and the accu- 

 racy of the wording of his propositions, than the internal truth 

 of things. And this is best shown by a comparison of his 

 philosophy with the others of greatest repute among the 

 Greeks. For the similar parts of Anaxagoras, the atoms of 

 Leucippus and Democritus, the heaven and earth of Parmen- 

 ides, the discord and concord of Empedocles, the resolution of 

 bodies into the common nature of fire, and their condensation 

 according to Heraclitus, exhibit some sprinkling of natural 

 philosophy, the nature of things, and experiment ; whilst Aris- 

 totle's physics are mere logical terms, and he remodelled the 

 same subject in his metaphysics under a more imposing title, 

 and more as a realist than a nominalist. Nor is much stress 

 to be laid on his frequent recourse to experiment in his books 

 on animals, his problems, and other treatises; for he had al- 

 ready decided, without having properly consulted experience 

 as the basis of his decisions and axioms, and after having so 

 decided, he drags experiment along as a captive constrained to 

 accommodate herself to his decisions ; so that he is even more 

 to be blamed than his modern followers (of the scholastic 

 school) who have deserted her altogether. 



64. The empiric school produces dogmas of a more deformed 

 and monstrous nature than the sophistic or theoretic school ; 

 not being founded in the light of common notions (which, 

 however poor and superstitious, is yet in a manner universal, 

 and of a general tendency), but in the confined obscurity of a 

 few experiments. Hence this species of philosophy appears 

 probable, and almost certain to those who are daily practised 

 in such experiments, and have thus corrupted their imagina- 

 tion, but incredible and futile to others. We have a strong 

 instance of this in the alchemists and their dogmas; it would 



