ITS FAILURE. 73 



tions of distance and musical notes, they assumed, 

 on this suggestion, the music of the spheres. 



Although we shall look in vain in the physical 

 philosophy of the Greek Schools, for any results 

 more valuable than those just mentioned, we shall 

 not be surprised to find, recollecting how much an 

 admiration for classical. antiquity has possessed the 

 minds of men, that some writers estimate their 

 claims much more highly than they are stated here. 

 Among such writers we may notice Dutens, who, 

 in 1766, published his "Origin of the Discoveries 

 attributed to the Moderns; in which it is shown that 

 our most celebrated Philosophers have received the 

 greatest part of their knowledge from the Works 

 of the Ancients." The thesis of this work is at- 

 tempted to be proved, as we might expect, by very 

 large interpretations of the general phrases used 

 by the ancients. Thus, when Timaeus, in Plato's 

 dialogue, says of the Creator of the world 8 , " that 

 he infused into it two powers, the origins of motions, 

 both of that of the same thing, and of that of dif- 

 ferent things ;" Dutens 9 finds in this a clear indica- 

 tion of the projectile and attractive forces of modern 



jience. And in some of the common declamation 

 )f the Pythagoreans and Platonists, concerning the 



general prevalence of numerical relations in the 

 universe, he discovers their acquaintance with the 



iw of the inverse square of the distance by which 



ravitation is regulated, though he allows 10 that it 

 8 Tim. 96. 9 3d ed. p. 83. 10 Ib. p. 88. 



