IS! ALVAKCEMENT OP LEAHNINO. [bOOK V. 



that the discovery and advancement of arts Lath made no 

 greater progress, when the art of inventing and discovering 

 the sciences remains hitherto unknown. That this part ol 

 knowledge is wanting, seems clear : for logic professes not, 

 nor pretends to invent, either mechanical or liberal arts, nor 

 to deduce the operations of the one, or the axioms of the 

 other; but only leaves us this instruction in passage, to 

 believe every artist in his own art.* Celsus, a wise man, as 

 well as a i)hysician, speaking of the empirical and dogmatical 

 sects of physicians, gravely and ingenuously acknowledges, 

 that medicines and cures were first discovered, and the 

 reasons and causes of them discoursed afterwards,^ not that 

 causes, first derived from the nature of things, gave light to 

 the invention of cures and remedies. And Plato, more than 

 once, observes, tLat particulars are infinite, that the highest 

 generalities give no certain directions ; and, therefore, that 

 the marrow of all sciences, whereby the artist is distin- 

 guished from the unskilful workman, consists in middle pro- 

 positions, which experience has delivered and taught in each 

 particular science.*' Hence those who write upon the first 

 inventors of things, and the origin of the sciences, rather 

 celebrate chance than art, and bring in beasts, birds, fishes, 

 and serpents, rather than men, as the first teachers of arts. 



** Dictamnum genitrix Cretaea carpit ab Ida, 

 Puberibus cauleni foliis, et flore comantem 

 Purpureo : non ilia feris incognita capris 

 Gramina, cum tergo volucres hsesere sagittae.'** 



Ko wonder, therefore, as the manner of antiquity was to 

 consecrate the inventors of useful things, that the Egyp- 

 tians, an ancient nation, to which many arts owe their rise, 

 had their temples filled with the images of brutes, and but 

 a few human idols amongst them. 



** Omnigentimque Delim monstra et latrator Anubis 

 Contra Neptunum et Venerem, contraque Minervam."* 



And if we should, according to the traditions of the Greeks, 

 ascribe the first invention of arts to men, yet we cannot say 

 that Prometheus studied the invention of fire ; or that when 



• See Whately's Intro. § 5, b. iii. (on Fallacies) § 2, and b. iv. ; also 

 Arist. Eth. Mag. 1. 1^1 7. ^ Re Medica, i. 3. 



e The Timaeus. «» ^neid. xii. 412. « ^neid, viii. 698. 



