53 2 PYTHAGOREAN WRITINGS. 



In this piece, fays he, we meet with a great deal 

 about eternal models and ideas by which the deity built 

 and ronftituted the whole creation. Thefe are doctrines 

 which all antiquity firft attributed to Plato *. 



To find him here on the beaten road is fomewhat 

 furprizing, as in all the reft of the treatife he feems fo 

 abhorrent of that broad way. It would be curious if he 

 fhould have proceeded unfeafonably to fome diftance on 

 this road, for the fake of being able unfeafonably to quit 

 it at another place. That Plato was the inventor of the 

 ideal fyftem is afTerted by moft of the aritients, and 

 after moft of the antients, by all the moderns. Some 

 antients, however, are of the contrary opinion ; there- 

 fore it is wrong here to appeal to the teftimony of all 

 antiquity. If, moreover, the antients of the oppoiite 

 party are very old, very credible ; but the others very 

 modern, very little acquainted with the pythagorean 

 philofophy ; then will this general faith, at firft fo 

 formidable, be nothing more than an empty fcarecrow. 

 Diogenes Laertius quotes verfes from the very antient 

 pythagorean poet Epicharmus, in which he endeavours 

 to prove the exiftence of fuch ideas -f\ A certain 

 Alcimus fhews from thefe and feveral other verfes, that 

 Plato purloined a great number of fpeculations or the 

 ideas from Epicharmus^. Confequently, Plato, ac- 

 cording to thefe teftimonies, was not conlidered by all 

 antiquity as either the inventor of the name, or as the 

 inventor of the matter. 



* Biblioth. Philolog. vol. i. p. 1 13. 



f Diog. Laert. iii. 10. 14, 



X Diog, Laert. Hi. 17. ■> 



But, 



