PRINCIPLES OF THINGS. 



39 



mind unite in identic substances. Numbers and forms are, in consequence, 

 not unfrequently contemplated as the same thing — as the models or arche- 

 types after which the world in all its parts is framed — as the cause of entity 



to visible beings : toDj dpi9/xoiig alnovs eivai Tiji ovffias* 



And hence, again, under the term monad, or unity, Pythagoras is generally 

 conceived to have symbolized God, or the active principle in nature ; under 

 duad, the passive principle, or matter ; and under triad, the visible world, 

 produced by the union of the two former. 



Pythagoras, however, was as much attached to music as to numbers, re- 

 garding it as a mere branch of the science of numbers applied to a definite 

 object. He has, indeed, the credit of having invented the monochord, and of 

 having applied the principles of music, as well as those of numbers, to the 

 study of physics. He conceived that the celestial spheres, in which the pla- "* 

 nets move, striking upon the elastic ether through which they pass, must pro- 

 duce a sound, and a sound that must vary according to the diversity of their 

 magnitude, velocity, and relative distance; and, as the adjustment of the 

 heavenly bodies to each other is perfect in every respect, he farther conjec- 

 tured, that the harmony produced by their revolutions must also be the most 

 perfect imaginable : and hence the origin of a notion, which is now, however, 

 only entertained in a figurative sense, a sense frequently laid hold of by our. 

 own poets, and thus exquisitely enlarged on by Dryden : — 



From harmony, from heav'nly harmony, ^ 

 This universal frame began. 

 When Nature underneath a heap 

 Of jarring atoms lay, 

 And could not heave her head, 

 The tuneful voice was heard from high, 



Arise, ye more than dead ! 

 Then hot and cold, and moist and dry, 

 In order to their stations leap, 

 And Music's povsrer obey. 

 From harmony, from heav'nly harmony, 

 This universal frame began ; 

 From harmony to harmony 

 Through all the compass of the notes it ran. 

 The diapason closing full in man. 



What Pythagoras thus called numbers, Plato denominated ideas ; a term which 

 has, hence, descended to our own day, and is on every one's lips, although in 

 a different sense from what it originally imported. The reason or wisdom 

 of the great First Cause, and which he denominates the logos of God, 6 XSyog, 

 or 5 Xoyianbg rov Qeov, and not unfrequcutly Avuiovpyds (Demiurgus), Plato describes 

 as a distinct principle from the Original Cause or Deity himself, from whom 

 this efficient or operative cause, this divine wisdom or logos, emanates, and 

 has eternally emanated, as light and heat from the sun. Thus emana/ing, he 

 conceived it to be the immediate region or reservoir of ideas or intellectual 

 forms, of the archetypes or patterns of things, subsisting by themselves as 

 real beings — rd ovTwg ovra — in this their eternal and original well-spring ; and 

 the union of which with the whole, or any portion of primary or incorporeal 

 matter, immediately produces palpable forms, and renders them objects of 

 contemplation and science to the external senses.f 



It is, hence, obvious that Plato contended for a triad or trinity of sub- 

 stances in the creation of the visible universe — God, divine wisdom, or the 

 eternal source of intellectual forms or ideas, and incorporeal matter. And it 

 is on this account that several of the earliest Christian fathers, who, as I have 

 already observed, had been educated in the Platonic school, and had imbibed 

 his notions, regarded this doctrine as of divine origin; and endeavoured, 

 though preposterously, to blend the trinity of Plato, and that of the Christian 

 Scripture, into one common dogma : an attempt which has been occasionally 

 revived in modern times, especially by Cudworth and Ogilvie, with great 

 profundity of learning and great shrewdness of argument, but, at the same 

 time, with as little success as in the first ages of Christianity. 



* Arist. Met. lib. i. c. 6. Phit. Plac. Phil lib. i, cap 3. Athenag Apol 49 

 t Plac. Phil lib i. cap. x Tina, lib c. 



