VOI«X,Vin»] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 681, 



From them he goes to the Egyptians, of whom he observes that more 

 may be challenged from them, than from other nations, because their pretences 

 to exactness in recording inventions and traditions have been more considerable. 

 Yet he thinks that their history could not be extraordinary, since both the time., 

 when the pyramids were built, and that when their great hero Sesostris lived, 

 could never be determined by the most ancient writers now extant : that all 

 the great ancient inventions in geometry, though its original be owing to them, 

 are conveyed to us by Greeks as their own inventions : tliat their medicine was 

 wholly built upon astrological or magical grounds : that their pretences to the 

 philosopher's stone seem to have been fathered upon them by later alchemists: 

 that their skill in anatomy was so small, that they believed that the heart in- 

 creased annually two drachms in weight till men were 50 years old, and after- 

 wards decreased as gradually; for which reason, according to them, no man 

 could live above 100 years : that with all their boasted curiosity, they seem 

 never to have sailed 200 miles on the Nile into Ethiopia; since till about 

 Plato's time, they could not give a clear solution of the annual inundations of 

 that wonderful river : and in short, that their greatest skill lay in making wise 

 and prudent laws, which were worth going so far as the Greeks went to fetch 

 them. (Chap. 9, 10.) 



He thinks that the Chaldean learning was not so excellent as the .Egyptian; 

 that the Assyrian history, which we have from the Chaldeans, contradicts the 

 Jewish : that the Chaldean astrology was downright knavery : and that for other 

 things, had they been very considerable, there would have been more memo- 

 rials of them preserved. The Arabian learning is, according to him, all in a 

 manner owing to the Greeks, so that its antiquity or extent cannot here be 

 alledged. (Chap. 11.) 



He believes the Chinese natural knowledge to be very inconsiderable, and 

 their speculative skill in medicine entirely fantastical : to prove which, he pro- 

 duces a long citation out of an old Chinese book, called Nuy-Kim, printed 

 by Cleyer in his specimens of Chinese Physic. (Chap. 12.) 



He divides the Grecian learning into four parts ; Logic, Metaphysics, Ma- 

 thematics, and Physics. Logic, as it is the art of disputation and method,, 

 is, in his opinion, to be ascribed to the ancients ; as it is the art of invention, 

 it is more owing to the moderns, since the methods of invention which the 

 ancients made use of seem to be entirely lost. Here he commends Descartes's 

 Meditations, Tschirnhaus's Medicina Mentis, and Mr. Locke's Essay on the 

 Human Understanding. In Metaphysics he thinks the writings of Descartes and 

 his followers may be set against all that the Platonists say upoQ those subjects^ 



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