54-6 PYTHAGOREAN WRITINGS. 



known for one who was very apt to make ufe of foreign 

 inventions under borrowed names, and with fome new 

 limitations to pafs them for his own. His forms are 

 undoubtedly platonic, and his con trailed principles un- 

 doubtedly pythagoric. Againft both he contends in 

 more than one place of his writings, and yet adopts 

 both with the alteration of a few collateral circum- 

 ftances. 



That nobody reproached him with it is eafily com- 

 prehended, if we do but accurately ftate who that no- 

 body is. It is not, as the author pretends, the whole 

 antient world ; for that we know not ; it is only the faiall 

 remains of antient authors which grudging fate has fuf- 

 fered to reach our times. Cicero, Sextus Empyricus, 

 Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, are the principal perfons 

 that this large expreffion comprehends. Why thefe did 

 not make that reproach to Ariftotle it is not difficult to 

 fee. Cicero had not read any pythagoric writings, flnee 

 he never quotes them ; Plutarch and Sextus are in the 

 fame predicament, as they likewife never name the 

 pythagoric writings. Therefore no reproach was to be 

 expected from them. 



But from the other authors from whence they drew 

 their materials ? — In proper Greece the pythagorean 

 philofophy could never make its way ; accordingly the 

 pythagoric writings were not there much known. And 

 even if they had been more known : yet it may fo have 

 happened, that thefe few remains had no convenient 

 opportunity for divulging this ariftotelian theft. 



This theft however has been actually divulged, and 

 that exactly, by a writer whofe words are quoted by 



i our 



