

ITS TECHNICAL FORMS. (17 



and blood, and bone. As the former tenet points 

 to the corpuscular theories of modern times, so the 

 latter may be considered as a dim glimpse of the 

 idea of chemical analysis. The Stoics also, who 

 were, especially at a later period, inclined to ma- 

 terialist views, had their technical modes of speak- 

 ing on such subjects. They asserted that matter 

 contained in itself tendencies or dispositions to 

 certain forms, which dispositions they called \oyoi 

 cnrepiuLariKol, seminal proportions, or seminal rea- 

 sons. 



Whatever of sound view, or right direction, 

 there might be in the notions which suggested these 

 and other technical expressions, was, in all the 

 schools of philosophy (so far as physics was con- 

 cerned), quenched and overlaid by the predominance 

 of trifling and barren speculations ; and by the love 

 of subtilizing and commenting upon the works of 

 earlier writers, instead of attempting to interpret 

 the book of nature. Hence these technical terms 

 served to give fixity and permanence to the tradi- 

 tional dogmas of the sect, but led to no progress of 

 knowledge. 



The advances which were made in physical 

 science proceeded, not from these schools of philo- 

 sophy, (if we except, perhaps, the obligations of the 

 science of Harmonics to the Pythagoreans,) but from 

 reasoners who followed an independent path. The 

 sequel of the ambitious hopes, the vast schemes, 

 the confident undertakings of the philosophers of 



