BOOK II. 



THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES IN ANCIENT GKEECE. 



Plato's Timceus and Republic. 



ALTHOUGH a great portion of the physical speculations of the 

 Greek philosophers was fanciful, and consisted of doctrines which 

 were rejected in the subsequent progress of the Inductive Sciences ; 

 still many of these speculations must be considered as forming a Prel- 

 ude to more exact knowledge afterwards attained ; and thus, as really 

 belonging to the Progress of knowledge. These speculations express, 

 as we have already said, the conviction that the phenomena of nature 

 are governed by laws of space and number ; and commonly, the math- 

 ematical laws which are thus asserted have some foundation in the 

 facts of nature. This is more especially the case in the speculations 

 of Plato. It has been justly stated by Professor Thompson (A. But- 

 ler's Lectures, Third Series, Lect. i. Note 11), that it is Plato's merit 

 to have discovered that the laws of the physical universe are resolvable 

 into numerical relations, and therefore capable of being represented 

 by mathematical formulae. Of this truth, it is there said, Aristotle 

 does not betray the slightest consciousness. 



The Timceus of Plato contains a scheme of mathematical and phys- 

 ical doctrines concerning the universe, which make it far more anal- 

 ogous than any work of Aristotle to Treatises which, in modern times, 

 have borne the titles of Principia, System of the World, and the like. 

 And fortunately the work has recently been well and carefully studied, 

 with attention, not only to the language, but to the doctrines and their 

 bearing upon our real knowledge. Stallbaum has published an edition 

 of the Dialogue, and has compared the opinions of Plato with those of 

 Aristotle on the like subjects. Professor Archer Butler of Dublin has 

 devoted to it several of his striking and eloquent Lectures ; and these 

 have been furnished with valuable annotations by Professor Thompson 

 of Cambridge ; and M. The. Henri Martin, then Professor at Rennes, 

 published in 1841 two volumes of Etudes sur le Timee de Platon, in 



Vol. I.— 32 



