42 THE GREEK SCHOOL PHILOSOPHY. 



kind with which we are here concerned, was little 

 more efficacious than that of his rival. It consists 

 mainly, as may be seen in several of the dialogues, 

 and especially in the Timams, in the application of 

 notions as loose as those of the Peripatetics; for 

 example, the conceptions of the Good, the Beau- 

 tiful, the Perfect ; and these are rendered still more 

 arbitrary, by assuming an acquaintance with the 

 views of the Creator of the universe. The philo- 

 sopher is thus led to maxims which agree with 

 those of the Aristotelians, that there can be no 

 void, that things seek their own place, and the 

 like 4 . 



Another mode of reasoning, very widely applied 

 in these attempts, was the doctrine of contrarieties, 

 in which it was assumed, that adjectives or sub- 

 stantives which are in common language, or in some 

 abstract mode of conception, opposed to each other, 

 must point at some fundamental antithesis in nature, 

 which it is important to study. Thus Aristotle 5 

 says, that the Pythagoreans, from the contrasts 

 which number suggests, collected ten principles, 

 Limited and Unlimited, Odd and Even, One and 

 Many, Right and Left, Male and Female, Rest and 

 Motion, Straight and Curved, Light and Darkness, 

 Good and Evil, Square and Oblong. We shall see 

 hereafter, that Aristotle himself deduced the doc- 

 trine of Four Elements, and other dogmas, by oppo- 

 sitions of the same kind. 



4 Timjeus, p. 80. 5 Metaph. 1. 5. 



