52 



an able sculptor, who from the broken bust of Phi. 

 dias, or any other famous ancient, is capable, by the 

 strength of his own genius, and the skill he has in his 

 art, exactly to judge by that single piece, of the pro- 

 portions which ought to take place in every member, 

 so as to form and unite them together in so just a 

 manner, that his statue shall be as perfect as the other. 

 The merit of such a modern artist, doubtless deserves 

 great praise ; but theglory of the ancient one will still 

 be superior, because the idea of the proportions of the 

 adjusted members, was taken from that of those in 

 the broken bust. It is easy to apply this comparison 

 to modern philosophers, of whom the most eminent, 

 so far from seeking to avoid the charge of having 

 borrowed their opinions from the ancients, have 

 often been the first to own it ; of which Descartes, 

 and the priucipal Newtonians, furnish us with striking 

 examples. 



3. Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, and Aristotle in. 

 form us, that Anaxagoras thought bodies were com. 

 posed of similar, or homogeneous particles ; that those 

 bodies, however, admitted a certain quantity of small 

 particles that were heterogeneous, or of another kind; 

 but that to constitute any body of a particular spe- 

 cies, it sufficed that it was composed of a great num- 

 ber of small particles, similar and constitutive of 

 that species. Different bodies were masses of parti* 

 des similar among themselves: dissimilar however re- 

 Jatirely to those of any other body, or to the mass of 

 snvall particles, belonging to a different species. They 

 believed, for example, that blood was formed of many 

 particles, each of which had blood in it ; that a bone 

 was formed of many small bones, which from their ex- 

 treme littleness evaded our view. Likewise, accord- 

 ing to this philosopher, nothing was properly liable 

 io birth, or to death ; generations of every kind, be- 

 ing no other than an assemblage of small particles, 

 constituent of the kind ; and the destruction of a body 

 being no otfuir, than the disunion of many small bo- 



