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thought it to be water; Anaximenes and Diogenes, air; CHAP. Hippasus and Heraclitus, fire; Empedocles to them added earth. Hitherto, saith he, we find nothing but the material cause; but, saith he, πроïóνтwv dovтws autò Tò Ibid. πρᾶγμα ὡδοποίησεν αὐτοῖς καὶ συνηνάγκασε ζητεῖν· when they had gone so far, the very nature of things carried them farther in their inquiries. For whatever change be made in generation and corruption, there must be some cause why it so happened. For mere matter doth not change itself. As wood doth not make itself into a bed, nor brass into a statue; but some artificer doth it. But the seeking this is looking after another principle, which he calls the principle of motion. Which those who asserted from the beginning, ran themselves into difficulties, although they asserted matter to be one; but those who went no farther than matter, whether water, or fire, or earth, were never able to clear the production of things, and therefore were forced by truth itself (vπ' avτñs TMñs åλnbeías) to seek for another principle. Where it is very considerable that Aristotle saith, that there were some from the beginning who asserted both principles; and that those who asserted only a material principle ran themselves into such difficulties, which they could never see their way through; but were forced at last, by the mere power of truth, to seek for another principle. Which not only shews his own opinion, but that others, upon consideration, were fain to set up a new hypothesis against these Materialists; not wholly new, as he shews, but new in opposition to them, who thought at first, by pretending to skill in philosophy, to have run down the ancient opinion of mankind, founded on such a tradition of which none could trace the original. Of which I have already produced the testimonies of Plato and Plutarch. But now the humour of philosophizing coming among the Greeks, the

BOOK first setters up of this were very apt to contemn any I. thing that was built on tradition; for that gave no reason of things, which it was their business to do. In some things, then unknown as to the natural causes of them, they wonderfully surprised the common sort; who thereupon admired them as men that could do any thing. Being thus puffed up with a vain opinion of their own skill, they attempted to give an account of the very beginning of the world; and finding out what they thought the main principle of which things were composed, they had no more to do but to suppose them all reduced to a mass or chaos; and then they fancied, that, by the motion of these several parts of matter, things would fall into that state we now see them in the world. But as much as they pleased themselves with these speculations, those who came after them found them extremely defective, both in the beginning of this motion, and the order of it. For they found matter to be a dull inactive thing of itself, and that no matter could form itself without an agent; and therefore they saw it necessary to add a supreme efficient Cause, which should both put the parts of matter, however qualified, into motion, and direct and regulate the course of it. For otherwise it was impossible to conceive that there should be such distinct systems or bodies of matter as there are in the world. For how come the several vortices not to interfere with each other? What made the centres of them to be distinct from one another, so as that the matter within such circumference should move about that alone? And without this it is impossible to conceive there should be such bodies as the sun, moon, and stars are; so great, and yet so distinct from each other. But what cause then was found so necessary to be superadded? Aristotle saith, that the order, and fitness of things, which he calls ev kai kaλus, must

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proceed from an intelligent Cause; for these things CHAP. could never come either from mere material causes, as fire, earth, &c. or only by chance. And therefore he saith Anaxagoras wrote like a man in his senses, in comparison of those before him; which shews that he looked on the other speculations as dreams and idle fancies. And he will not allow Anaxagoras to have been the first that asserted this; but he did it pavepas, openly and plainly, in opposition to such as had set up another hypothesis. For before him, he saith, Hermotinus Clazomenius had said the same thing as to a superior Cause: and so, no doubt, had many others; but he mentions him as a philosopher of the same city from whence Anaxagoras came. But it seems the reputation of Thales and his scholars had obtained so much in the Greek colonies where they inhabited, that they buried the name of others; although Clazomena were a city of Ionia too.

in Pericle,

But that Anaxagoras was a person of a just esteem, appears by the great value which Pericles set upon him, Plutarch. τοῦτον ὑπερφυῶς τὸν ἄνδρα θαυμάσας ὁ Περικλῆς, who not p. 154. only had him for his counsellor, but ventured his in- ed. Xyland. terest to preserve him and although he was overruled by the contrary faction as to his banishment, yet he took care of him in it. And as Plutarch saith, he obtained the name of Nous; he cannot tell whether it was for his opinion, or the reputation of his wisdom. And after he was buried at Lampsacus, a city of Asia Minor near the Hellespont, there were two inscriptions on the altar erected to his memory, which testified the very great esteem of him in two words; the one was Nous, and the other 'Abela. And what can be said greater Elian. of a philosopher, than that understanding and truth 1. viii. c. 19. belonged to him? Timon, who was not very civil to the memories of most philosophers, gives him a high character in Laertius: who saith likewise, That he

pir. p. 153.

Plato in

Phædr.

taph. 1. iv.

Pericle.

Ibid.

BOOK was born to a considerable estate; but he had a mind I. above riches. And Sextus Empiricus saith, he was the Sext. Em- most skilful in natural philosophy; and he was blamed both by Socrates and Aristotle for running too far into Arist. Me- natural causes; as though he made use of his supreme Plutarch. in Mind only to help him out, when nothing else would. But therein he shewed that it was not for want of understanding natural causes, that he asserted an Eternal Mind, pure and unmixed, which was the first. cause of things; but it was his true skill in philosophy, which brought him to it. For he fixed on the principle of gravitation as the main foundation of union and composition; but the other hypotheses of vortices, or circumlations without it, he looked on as weak and insufLeviathan, ficient. So vain is that saying of Lucretius, and a modern philosopher, that ignorance of causes inclined men to religion; especially as to the heavenly bodies: Præterea cœli rationes ordine certo,

ch. 12.

Lucret. v. 1182.

Id. i. 69.

Et varia annorum cernebant tempora verti,
Nec poterant quibus id fieret cognoscere causis ;
Ergo perfugium sibi habebant omnia divis

Tradere, et illorum nutu facere omnia flecti.

For the truest and exactest searcher into natural causes, we see, was the most firm and steady assertor of a God. Lucretius magnifies his hero, that neither the common fame, nor the thunder and lightning had frighted him into any sense of religion; but that he had gone beyond the clouds by the strength of his wit, and had settled all the bounds of nature.

Quem nec fama Deum, nec fulmina, nec minitanti
Murmure compressit cœlum, &c.

Which was all becoming the more than poetic fury of
Lucretius to say. But Plutarch, in the Life of Pericles,
saith, that Anaxagoras explained to him the natural
causes of those meteors which are so apt to terrify
mankind, and thereby took away an ignorant supersti-

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tion; but instead of that he settled in his mind T do- CHAP. φαλῆ μετ ̓ ἐλπίδων ἀγαθῶν εὐσέβειαν, a firm devotion, accompanied with good hopes. And is not this far beyond the utmost Lucretius attributes to his hero? supposing he had such success, as he imagined, which we have only the poet's word for.

Quare relligio pedibus subjecta vicissim

Obteritur, nos exæquat victoria cœlo.

Lucret, i. 79.

Colot.

But we can find no such victory that he ever obtained over religion, by his foolish and precarious hypothesis, which the more learned pretenders to atheism in our age are ashamed of, because of its vanity and inconsistency; and therefore there is now less need of insisting upon it. But what reason had Lucretius to make such extravagant boasting of Epicurus's success against the principles of religion, when Cicero, of the same age and time, and a friend to Lucretius, had so very mean an opinion of it, and hath exposed it so much to contempt in more places than one? But possibly he may mean, it had so at Athens: nothing like it. For it was ob- Plut. adv. served, that none were more forward to comply with the popular superstitions, none more reserved as to their real opinions about the Deity, than Epicurus and his followers. What need all this mean compliance, this caution and reserve, if they were such conquerors as he represents them? They never opposed the common sentiments, as Anaxagoras did, and suffered for it; but, instead of it, they industriously laboured to persuade the people that they were for piety and veneration of the gods; and Epicurus wrote about it: whether in earnest or not, I dispute not; but he was in earnest concerned for his own security. Are these the marks of a conqueror? And yet in his time the fear of the Areopagus, after the time of Ephialtes, was in great measure removed. It is observed by Josephus,

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