CHAP. IV.] HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHIES. 137 



procedure is required iii the right discovery of truth. Fof 

 as Aristotle accurately remarks, that children, when they 

 first begin to speak, call every woman mother ; but after- 

 wards learn to distinguish their own :° so a childish ex- 

 l>erience calls every philosophy its mother, but when grown 

 up, will easily distinguish its tnie one. In the mean time, 

 it is proper to read the disagreeing philosophies^ as so many 

 different glosses of nature. We could therefore wish there 

 were, with care and judgment, drawn up a work of the 

 ancient philosophies,? from the lives of old philosophers, 

 Plutarch's collection of their opinions, the citations of Plato, 

 the confutations of Aristotle, and the scattered relations of 

 other books, whether ecclesiastical or heathen; as Lactantius, 

 Pliilo, Philostratus, &c. For such a work is not yet extant ; 

 and we would advise it to be done distinctly ; so that each 

 philosophy be drawn out and continued separate, and not 

 ranged under titles and collections, as Plutarch has done. 

 For every philosophy, when entire, supports itself, and its 

 doctrines thus add light and strength to each other ; which, 

 if separated, sound strange and harsh. Thus, when we read 

 in Tacitus the acts of Nero or Claudius, clothed with the 

 circumstances of times, persons, and occasions, everything 

 seems plausible ; but when the same are read in Suetonius, 

 distributed under chapters and common-places, and not 

 described in the order of time, they look monstrous, and 

 absolutely incredible. And the case is the same with philo- 

 sophy proposed entire, and dismembered, or cut into articles. 

 Nor do we exclude from this calendar the modern theories 

 and opinions, as those of Paracelsus, elegantly reduced by 



" Aristotle's Physics. 



P The work here proposed is of vast extent, and a fit nndertaking for 

 a society, as intended to include all the ancient and modern systems of 

 philosophy, or the history of knowledge through all ages and countries. 

 Considerable progress has, however, been made in it, particularly by 

 Vossius " De Philosophia, et Philosophorum Sectis," continued with a 

 3upplement by Russel, printed at Jena, in the year 1705 ; by Panci- 

 rollus, "De Rebus inventis et perditis ;" by Paschius, "De Novis In- 

 vent! s, quibus fe.cem praetulit antiquitas ;" by Stanley in liis " Lives of 

 the Philosophers ;" by Herbelot in his " Bibliotheque TJniverselle ;" by 

 M. Bayle in his " Dictionary," &c. For more collections, histories, and 

 writings to this purpose, see " Struvii Bibliotheca Philosophica," 

 Morhof's " Pclyhistor," and "StoL'i Introdrc-'o in Hist^riara Ljfc»« 

 rariam." Shaw. 



