40 



ON THE IbXEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT 



It is to this theory, which, indeed, is highly fitted for poetry, and much 

 "better so than for dry, dialectic discussion, Akenside beautifully alludes in 

 the first book of his " Pleasures of Imagination :" — 



Ere the radiant sun 

 Sprang from the east, or, mid the vault of night, 

 The moon suspended her serener lamp ; 

 Ere mountains, woods, or streams adorn'd the globe, 

 Or Wisdom taught the sons of men her lore ; 

 Then lived th' Eternal One : then, deep retir'd 

 In his unfathom'd essence, view'd the forms, 

 The forms eternal of created things : 

 The radiant sun, the moon's nocturnal lamp, 

 The mountains, woods, and streams, the rolling globe, 

 And Wisdom's mien celestial. From the first 

 Of days, on them his love divine he fix'd, 

 His admiration ; till, in time complete. 

 What he admir d and lov'd his vital smile 

 Unfolded into being. Hence the breath 

 Of life in forming each organic frame ; 

 Hence the green earth, and wild-resounding waves ; 

 Hence light and shade alternate ; warmth and cold j 

 And clear autumnal skies, and vernal showers ; 

 And all the fair variety of things. 



While, however, we thus point out the fancifulness and imperfections of 

 these hypotheses, let us, with the candour of genuine philosophy, do justice 

 to the merits of their great inventors, and join in the admiration which has 

 been so duly bestowed upon them by the wise and learned of every country. 

 It was Plato who first suggested to Galileo, even upon his own confession, 

 that antagonist power by which a rectilinear motion can be converted into an 

 orbicular, and thus laid a basis for our accounting for thq regular movements 

 of the heavenly bodies,* a subject upon which we shall enter to a certain ex- 

 tent in our next lecture ; who, in some degree, anticipated that correct system 

 of colours which nothing but the genius of a Newton could fully develope 

 and explain ;f who, in mathematics, unfolded to us the analytic method of 

 , solving a problem,| and in theosophy so far surpassed all the philosophers 

 of his country, in his correct views and sublime descriptions of the Deity, 

 that he seems almost to have drunk of the inspiration of Horeb or of Sinai ; 

 and who, in his Timaeus, applies to the wisdom of God, the Aoyiff/io? tov Oeov — a 

 term which in Hebrew could scarcely be translated by any other word than 

 that of Jevah or Jehovah — rras bvTwg aa,^ " whatever is essentially eternal." 

 . Of Pythagoras, it is only necessary to direct the attention to the two fol- 

 lowing very extraordinary facts, to place him beyond the reach of panegyric ; 

 the first of which has occasionally furnished reflection for other writers, 

 though the latter remains unnoticed to the present moment. At an antedate 

 of two thousand two hundred years from the age of Copernicus, this won- 

 derful genius laid the first foundation of the Copernican system, and taught 

 to his disciples that the earth revolves both around her own axis and around 

 the sun ; that the latter motion is conducted in an oblique path or zodiac ;|| 

 and that the moon is an earth of the same kind as our own, and replete with 

 animals, whose nature, however, he does not venture to describe.]P 



The second extraordinary fact to which I allude, is one we have already 

 slightly glanced at, but which must not so cursorily be relinquished ; I mean 

 that, in ascribing to the primary or elementary forms of bodies, in their unions 

 with each other, relative proportions so exact, yet so diversified, that forms 

 and numbers maybe employed as synonymes or convertible terms, he has ex- 

 hibited so close a coincidence with one of the latest and most surprising dis- 

 coveries of the present day, that though I dare not call it an anticipation, I 



* Galilei Discorsi ^ Dimostrazioni Matematiche, p. 254, 4to. Leyd, 1638. Dutens. Origine des Decou 

 vertes, &c. p. 90, 4to. Lond. 1796. 



t Plut. de Placitis Philos. lib. i. cap. 15, p. 32. Dutens, ut supr. p. 101. 



i Dutens, tit supr. p. 251. § Plutarch, in Tim. lib. iii. 34. 37. 



(I Plutarch, de Placitis, lib. iii. cap. 11. 13. Diog. Laert. lib. viii. sect. 85. Copernicus himself admitB 

 that he derived his first hint of the.earth's motion from Nicetas, a follower of Pythagoras. Vide his address 

 to Paul m. 



U Plutarch, de Plaeit. Cicer. Acad. Quaest. lib. iv. p. 984, col, 1. Something of this doctrine is to be found 

 in the Orphic Hymn. Procl. de Orpheo, lib. iv, in Timaeura, p. 154. 



