BOOK among some who would seem to have more wit than 1. others;) and it had so great success therein, that he utterly renounced all principles tending that way. The passage which he produces is certainly in Aristotle;

Protrept.

Aus. l. iii.

C. 4.

and it seems so capable of a good meaning, that CleClem. Alex. mens Alexandrinus joined him with Anaxagoras in p. 43. c. 5. supposing an Infinite Being above the elements; and ed. Oxou. it cannot be denied that the author of the book de Mundo (who, as I before observed, was very ancient, if not Aristotle) doth use the same expression concerning God, that he doth contain and govern all things: but yet, laying the passages in Aristotle together, there is too great reason to suspect that Anaximander did. Arist. Nat. not assert an Eternal Mind, as Anaxagoras did. He is there giving an account of the different notions philosophers had concerning the first Principle. Some asserted it to be infinite, as Anaxagoras and Democritus. The former held things to be made out of one another, and that there was one first Principle of all, which he called Mind. The latter held no generation of things out of another; but that one common matter or body was the only principle of all things; and that the parts differed only by bulk and figure. Thus far Aristotle is clear. Then he goes on to shew, that the first Principle must be ingenite and incorruptible; and then it must contain and govern all things; as all do hold, who do not assert other causes, as mind (as Anaxagoras) or friendship (as Empedocles). And this is the Tò Octov, the Divine Being, which is immortal and incorruptible, as was asserted by Anaximander, and the most of those he calls physiologists, i. e. who went no farther than the bare nature of things. Now here it is plain that he doth distinguish Anaximander and his followers from Anaxagoras, who asserted an Eternal Mind and he distinguishes his opinion both from that

.

I.

phys. 1. i.

of Democritus and Anaximander. It may be said, that CHAP. it is plain from hence that Anaximander did assert a Divine Being; but at last it came to nothing but infinite matter; which was the original and mother-god to his dii geniti, as he called them. In another place he speaks yet more plainly, viz. that those philosophers Id. Metabefore Anaxagoras went no farther than matter, and c. 3. made all things to come out of it, and to be dissolved into it again; being itself one and immutable under all the variety of changes. He saith, they differed about the first material principle: Thales, and one Hippon, called the Atheist, (the first of that order that we read of,) held it to be water; but Aristotle bestows a very severe character upon him, viz. Διὰ τὴν εὐτέλειαν aútcũ tñs diavoías, that he did not deserve to be mentioned for the meanness of his capacity. (It seems wit and atheism did not begin together.) Anaximander would go no farther than infinite matter in general; but Anaximenes was for air; and so was Diogenes Apolloniates, who lived in the time of Anaxagoras; but it seems by Demetrius Phalereus's apology for Socrates, (now lost,) that he fell into some danger at Athens, (possibly for being against the worship of fire, as Anaxagoras was.) But upon the whole matter I do not see how Anaximander can be excused, although he left the popular gods, and bestowed the name of Divinity upon his infinite matter.

But there was another succession of philosophers derived from Xenophanes, who lived in Sicily, saith Laertius, and was contemporary with Anaximander: and he was neither a follower of Thales nor of Pythagoras; but from a town near the sea in Italy, whence his chief followers came, it was called the Eleatic sect. He was a great enemy to the poetical fictions about the gods, as he had reason; for they strangely corrupted

BOOK the minds of the people, and took away all inward reI. verence towards the Deity. And although Aristotle speaks with some contempt of him, yet others have shewed that he misunderstood him, and that he assertBessarion ed one Infinite and Eternal Mind; and the same But Simplicius saith of Parmenides and Melissus.

cont. Ca

lumn.

C. 10, II.

Plat. 1. ii. since the learned author of the Intellectual System of the Universe hath very well cleared that matter, I intend not to transcribe him, but to refer my reader to him, and proceed to those who changed the first notions of the Eleatic sect, and set up for the making a world without a Deity. And those were Leucippus and DeStob.Eclog.mocritus; and yet Stobæus saith, that Leucippus wrote Phys. c. 8. a book about mind; wherein he hath this saying, That nothing is done in vain, but all things are done from reason and necessity. How these two things came to be so put together, is hard for us now to conjecture, Plutarch. de unless that book of his had been preserved. Plutarch los. 1. i. c. 7. saith, that Democritus held that God was an intellectual fire, and the soul of the world. But it appears by Cic. de Nat. Cicero, that Democritus did not stick at making some

Placitis Phi

Deor. 1. i. very subtle effluvia of his atoms to be gods, both those

without us, and those within us, viz. those which make up our intellectual faculties. It is very hard to say what his true notion of Divinity was, unless we could have seen his books about Mind and Providence, which Laertius saith that he wrote. But whatever he might write for the amusing the world, (as Epicurus did afterwards,) if he made the origin of all things to have been without mind or providence, no titles of books will be a sufficient excuse for him.

And I confess it is all one to me, whether those who framed the atheistical hypotheses proceeded in the way of forms and qualities, or of atoms and vacuity; because I think the one way as impossible as the other. For

.I.

as Aristotle hath well observed, the great difficulties as CHAP. to the first principles lay in two things; the beginning of motion, and the order of the world: and in both these the different hypotheses of Anaximander and Democritus were equally defective. But whether the world were made by the circumvolution of infinite matter, endued with contrary qualities, or by the motion of atoms, which had nothing but bulk and figure, signifies nothing as to the main point. I do not deny but one hypothesis may in some respects be more intelligible than the other, and tend more to explain the difference of body and mind: but there are still difficulties on both sides. Some things may be taken for real qualities, which are not; and the many experiments of this age have fully proved it: but then there are other things, especially relating to animals, which can never be explained in the mechanical way, to the satisfaction of any reasonable man.

But although Anaximander and Democritus started these two different hypotheses about the origin of the world, yet those who asserted an Eternal Mind to be the first cause, had in common reason very much the advantage of either; since it was impossible for them to give an account how the motion of matter began, or how it fell into that order, and beauty, and usefulness, which we find in those parts which make up the visible world. All that we can learn of Anaximander's hypothesis is, that the heavens and infinite worlds (for Plutarch. why should they stop, when they could make worlds so Præp. Ev. easily?) were produced by an infinite circumvolution of all things; that these had in them very different qualities from each other, some hot, some cold, some dry, some moist, &c. that these being in continual motion, a mixture of them happened, and according to the different mixtures of qualities, the several sorts of

.

apud Eus.

1. i. c. 8.

BOOK things did arise. This, as far as I can apprehend, was his scheme of the production of things.

I.

Arist. Metaphys.

1. i. c. 3.

There is little difference between the two hypotheses of Anaximander and Democritus, but only in the point of mixture; which one attributes to qualities, and the other to the bulk and figure of atoms. They both assert the production of things by the circumvolution of the parts of matter; both held infinite worlds; and that the things of this world came together of themselves, without any superior cause.

But were not all the philosophers of their mind? No; so far from it, that the best and greatest of them utterly rejected this doctrine, as unsatisfactory to human reason of which we have an evident proof from Aristotle, who cannot be suspected of any partiality in this matter. In the beginning of his Metaphysics, he gives an account of the opinions of philosophers before him about the first principles of things. I know that he is hardly thought of by many for misrepresenting the opinions of those before him, and that he endeavoured to lessen their reputation to advance his own: but I can see no manner of reason for it in this case. It is possible, as to the Pythagorean and Eleatic sect, he might not represent their opinions so fairly as they were capable of: but as to these physiologists, as he calls them, he charges nothing upon them but what they owned; only he makes Thales the head of them; for which I have offered reasons to the contrary. But in general he saith, That those who began first to philosophize looked upon matter as the only principle out of which all things came, and to which they did return; the substance remaining the same, and the affections only changed: as Socrates is the same man, although his inward habits were changed. But what this material principle was, they were not agreed. Thales, the first of them,