VOL. XVII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 54$ 



mitted to their secrets, without being first circumcised, and otherwise qualified. 

 The Esseni, and other nations, as Persians, Syrians, and Indians, administered 

 oaths, &c. of secrecy. They farther obscured their knowledge by symbols, 

 aenigmas and fables, in which the Greeks also followed theni, as did also most 

 other nations in the histories of their gods ; of which kind he gives divers 

 instances. Among these are the Mythologies of the Prophets in the Old 

 Testament, and the Parables of Christ in the New. 



In the Qth chapter he inquires concerning the Grecian philosophy, of which» 

 that he may the more fully give the history, he produces sufficient proof to 

 show it derived from the Egyptian ; not that he denies the Grecians to have 

 much improved several parts of it. That they learned their geometry, astro- 

 nomy, and arithmetic from the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Phoenicians, Hero- 

 dotus, Plato, Aristotle, Diodorus, Strabo, Laertius, Achilles Tatius, and 

 others their own authors testify. It is said, Semiramis, who lived 800 years 

 before the Trojan war, built a high tower in Babylon, on the top of which the 

 astronomers made their observations, when the Greeks had not the use of let- 

 ters. And Calisthenes sent into Greece from Babylon, celestial observations 

 for 1900 years before Alexander's lime. And Epigenes found observations at 

 Babylon for 720 years, and others were brought of 480, as Pliny relates ; these 

 were inscribed on baked bricks ; whereas the Greek observations began with 

 Hipparchus and Ptolomy. The knowledge of letters was first brought into 

 Greece by Cadmus, not long before the Trojan war. Whereas learning flou- 

 rished in Assyria, Egypt, Phoenicia, Arabia, Ethiopia, India, and among the 

 Celti, long before that time. Suidas says, that Orpheus held the heavens to be 

 formed of the aether, and the earth out of the chaos, before which he placed 

 time as the measure, but he makes them both coeval ; whereas others of the 

 ancients separate them by a multitude of ages. Empedocles makes all the stars 

 to be fires, but Orpheus to be worlds ; as the moon was therefore called xvrlx^ov, 

 which Orpheus first asserted habitable, as also that the oval earth was to be 

 destroyed by fire, and then to be renewed. 



In the 1 0th chapter he inquires among the Greek philosophers that succeeded 

 Orpheus, and first among the Ionics. These are the second kind of physio- 

 logers who wrote expressly and in prose, not in verse and mythology, as the 

 former. Anaxagoras makes a mind to regulate matter, and move it, and was 

 therefore called N5?. He ranges the four elements by gravity, and is said to 

 have introduced vortices. As for the heavens, the lonians much promoted the 

 knowledge of them, i. e. they held the heavenly spaces to be aether ; the stars, 

 fire ; the planets, opake bodies ; that the moon had hills and vales, and was 

 habitable, and that it was enlightened by the sun, which was a most pure fire. 



