141 



respects by Leucippus, Dem-ocritus, Plato, Strato, 

 Aristippus, Plutarch, and Sextus Empiricus. 



4. Leibnitz hath not only revived the doctrine of 

 Pythagoras, but employed the very same arguments, 

 which, the Pythagoreans made use of to demonstrate 

 the necessity of admitting the existence of simple and 

 uncompounded things, anterior to those that were 

 compounded, and as being the foundation of the exis- 

 tence of body itself. M. de Buffon hath sometimes 

 quoted Aristotle and Hippocrates, but never when, 

 there was anyinquiry about the ground-work of his sys^ 

 tern, which has always been thought to be new, though 

 it appears to be almost entirely the same with that of 

 Anaxagoras, Empedoeies, and Plotinus. According 

 to the system of Pythagoras, Plato, and Epicurus, 

 the production of every thing in nature was ascribed 

 to the concurrent force of simple and active princi- 

 ples, long before Mr. Needham thought of it. The 

 philosophy of Gasscndi and the Newtonians, is no other 

 than that of Moschus, Leucippus, Deraocritus, and 

 Epicurus. The acceleration of motion was known to 

 Aristotle, and the best manner of accounting for it is 

 that which he makes use of. Lucretius observed long 

 before Galileo, that bodies the most unequal in weight, 

 such as gold and down, must descend with equal velo* 

 city in a vacuum. Universal gravity attractive, ccn 

 tripetal, and centrifugal force, were clearly indicated 

 by Anaxagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and Lu- 

 cretius. We have also seen that, without the aid of 

 telescopes, Democritus and Phavorinus entertained 

 very just ideas of the milky way, and predicated the 

 discovery of the satellites ; that a plurality of worlds, 

 and the doctrine of vortices, were clearly and with 

 precision taught by the ancients ; and that Pkito had 

 a notion of the theory of colours. We have set n, that 

 two thousand years before Copernicus, Pythagoras 

 had proposed the same system ; and that I'U o, Aris- 

 tarchus, and .many others, had admitted it ; as they 

 did also, without difficulty, the doc ine oi antipodes, 

 which though very reasonable in itsdt had so much 



