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works which we have at present. An eminent writer says that Aristotle’s 
style is so dry and terse that it is more like a table of contents than anything 
else. There is no doubt that if you read some of the Platonic writings, for 
instance, the Phcedo, you will find that there are things in them which, 
doubtless, are not meant to be taken seriously ; fancies which are not 
meant to be seriously propounded as realities. Take also Mr. Savile’s 
reference to the earlier philosophers ; there is the greatest difficulty in 
ascertaining what their opinions were. The best writers represent them 
vaguely, and what we have of their works are mere fragments. We need 
not, therefore, wonder, when we read them, that they seem exceedingly 
strange. But as these men lived at the very first dawn of human thought, 
we ought not to expect to find anything like a very coherent theory respecting 
the universe. There is one philosopher, Pythagoras, who is referred to in 
the paper ; now, nothing is more doubtful than the history of Pythagoras 
and the subjects of his teaching. If he is correctly reported to have 
discovered the forty-seventh proposition of the First Book of Euclid, he 
cannot be responsible for some of the excessively stupid things which have 
been attributed to him. Our knowledge of him, and of many of his doctrines, 
rests on an authority which is extremely doubtful, and which can only be 
accepted with the very greatest care. There cannot be a doubt that the 
speculations of many of the ancient philosophers were very wild and vague. 
This could not well be otherwise, for they had no facts t>o go upon. They 
were mere a priori speculations, and could not be of much assistance to 
us one way or the other. I wished only to point out two or three things 
which appeared to me to be exceedingly doubtful in Mr. Savile’s paper, and 
among them his references, which have rather shaken my faith in the value 
of others in the paper which I have not been able to verify. 
Mr. T. K. Callard. — I see from the valuable paper we have listened to 
this evening, that Mr. Savile regards the days of creation, — the six yoms, — 
as six epochs of time, and supposes each yom to be a period of 7,000 years. 
This appears to me to be adding a fresh difficulty to the reading of 
Scripture, instead of removing one. I can well understand why Hugh 
Miller should contend for the days being immense epochs, for he thought 
that by so doing he was gaining the time required by geology for the great 
antiquity of the globe ; but then Hugh Miller supposed the days to begin 
with the construction of the globe, whilst the yoms of Mr. Savile only date 
from the post-tertiary period. Mr. Savile has already got rid of the difficulty 
arising out of the earth’s antiquity by reading Gen. i. 2 (Tho lm and 
Bo hu), “without form and void,” not as the chaotic condition of the 
primary creation, but as the desolation of the earth’s surface, with the 
destruction of the flora and fauna, at a subsequent period, yet prior to the 
creation of man. I think the author is perfectly right in this rendering ; for 
in ho part of Scripture do these words occur without referring to something 
which has had form coming into a state of disorder, — it never refers to a 
chaotic condition of material that has not yet received form. If then there 
