72 THE GREEK SCHOOL PHILOSOPHY. 



works, any clear or permanent apprehension of the 

 general principles which such an interpretation 

 implies. 



Thus the Aristotelian physics cannot be con- 

 sidered as otherwise than a complete failure. It 

 collected no general laws from facts ; and conse- 

 quently, when it tried to explain facts, it had no 

 principles which were of any avail. 



The same may be said of the physical specula- 

 tions of the other schools of philosophy. They 

 arrived at no doctrines from which they could de- 

 duce, by sound reasoning, such facts as they saw; 

 though they often venture so far to trust their prin- 

 ciples as to infer from them propositions beyond 

 the domain of sense. Thus, the principle that each 

 element seeks its own place, led to the doctrine, 

 that, the place of fire being the highest, there is, 

 above the air, a Sphere of Fire; of which doctrine 

 the word Empyrean, used by our poets, still con- 

 veys a reminiscence. The Pythagorean tenet that 

 ten is a perfect number 7 , led some persons to as- 

 sume that the heavenly bodies are in number ten ; 

 and as nine only were known to them, they asserted 

 that there was an antichthon, or counter-earth, on 

 the other side of the sun, invisible to us. Their 

 opinions respecting numerical ratios, led to various 

 other speculations concerning the distances and 

 positions of the heavenly bodies : and as they had, 

 in other cases, found a connexion between propor- 

 7 Arist. Metaph. i. 5. 



