OF THE ASIATICS. I^p 



nected with ethics ; but, since the learned of Asia con- 

 sider most of their laws as positive and divine insti- 

 tutions, and not as the mere conclusions of human 

 reason ; and since I have prepared a mass of extremely 

 curious materials which I reserve for an introduction 

 to the digest of Indian laws, I proceed to the fourth 

 division; which consists principally of science, tran- 

 scendently so named, or the knowledge of abstract 

 quantities, of their limits, 'properties, and relations, im- 

 pressed on the understanding with the force of irre- 

 sistible demonstration ; which, as all other knowledge 

 depends, at best, on our fallible senses, and in a great 

 measure on still more fallible testimony, can only be 

 found in pure mental abstractions ; though for all the 

 purposes of life our own senses, and even the credible 

 testimony of others, give us in most cases the highest 

 degree of certainty, physical and moral. 



IV. I have already had occasion to touch on 

 the Indian metaphysics of natural oodles according to 

 the most celebrated of the Asiatic schools, from which 

 the Pythagoreans are supposed to have borrowed 

 many of their opinions ; and, as we learn from 

 Cicero, that the old sages of Europe had an idea of 

 centripetal force, and a principle of Universal gravita- 

 tion (which they never indeed attempted to demon- 

 strate) so I can venture to affirm, without meaning to 

 pluck a leaf from the never-fading laurels of our 

 immortal Newton, that the whole of his theology, 

 and part of his philosophy, may be found in the V4» 

 das, and even in the works of the Sttfis. That most 

 subtil sprit, which he suspected to pervade natural 



N 2 bodies, 



