WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS. 433 



be known from its cause, as being, next to God, the cause of causes, 

 and itself without a cause. And perhaps we are not to hope that the 

 modus of it should fall, or be comprehended, under human inquiry. 

 Vhence it is properly feigned to be the egg of Nox, or laid in the 

 dark. 



The divine philosopher declares, that &quot; God has made everything 

 beautiful in its season ; and has given over the world to our disputes 

 and inquiries : but that man cannot find out the work which God has 

 wrought, from its beginning up to its end.&quot; Thus the summary or 

 collective law or nature, or the principle of love, impressed by God 

 upon the original particles of all things, so as to make them attack 

 each other and come together, by the repetition and multiplication 

 whereof all the variety in the universe is produced, can scarce possibl 

 find full admittance in the thoughts of men, though some faint notion 

 may be had thereof. The Greek philosophy is subtile, and busied in 

 discovering the material principles of things, but negligent and languid 

 in discovering the principles of motion, in which the energy and 

 efficacy of every operation consists. And here the Greek philosophers 

 seem perfectly blind and childish ; for the opinion of the Peripatetics, 

 as to the stimulus of matter, by privation, is little more than words, or 

 rather sound than signification. And they who refer it to God, though 

 they do well therein, yet they do it by a start, and not by proper 

 degrees of assent ; for doubtless there is one summary, or capital 

 law, in which nature meets, subordinate to God, viz., the law men 

 tioned in the passage above quoted from Solomon ; or the work which 

 God has wrought from its beginning up to its end. 



Democritus, who farther considered this subject, having first sup- 

 oscd an atom, or corpuscle, of some dimension or figure, attributed 

 heret? an appetite, desire, or first motion simply, and another com 

 paratively, imagining that all things properly tended to the centre of 

 the world ; those containing more matter falling faster to the centre, 

 and thereby removing, and in the shock driving away, such as held 

 . ess. Hut this is a slender conceit, and regards too few particulars ; 

 for neither the revolutions of the celestial bodies, nor the contractions 

 nnd expansions of things, can be reduced to this principle. And for 

 the opinion of Kpicurus, as to the declination and fortuitous agitation 

 of atoms, this only brings the matter back again ic a trifle, and wraps 

 it up in ignorance and night. 



Cupid is elegantly drawn a perpetual child ; for compounds are 

 larger things, and have their periods of age ; but the first seeds or 

 atoms of bodies are small, and remain in a perpetual infant state. 



He is again justly represented naked ; as all compounds maj 

 properly be said to be dressed and clothed, or to assume a per 

 sonage ; whence nothing remains truly naked, but the original particles 

 of things. 



The blindness of Cupid contains a deep allegory ; for this same 

 Cupid, Love, or appetite of the world, seems to have very little fore 

 sight, but directs his steps and motions conformably to what he finds 

 next him, as blind men do when they feel out their way ; which 



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