do some few Things as Postulata which are so very plain that they will be assented to as soon as they are proposed 1. That all Men who make a Mystery of Matters of Learning and industriously oblige their Scholars to conceal their Dictates give the World great Reason to suspect that their Knowledge is all Juggling and Trick 2. That he that has only a Moral Persuasion of the Truth of any Proposition which is capable of Natural Evidence cannot so properly be esteemed the Inventor or the Discoverer rather of that Proposition as another Man who tho' he lived many Ages after brings such Evidences of its Certainty as are sufficient to convince all competent Judges especially when his Reasonings are founded upon Observations and Experiments drawn from and made upon the Things themselves 3. That no Pretences to greater Measures of Knowledge grounded upon Account of Long Successions of Learned Men in any Country ought to gain Belief when set against the Learning of other Nations who make no such Pretences unless Inventions and Discoveries answerable to those Advantages be produced by their Advocates 4. That we cannot judge of Characters of Things and Persons at a great Distance when given at Second-hand unless we knew exactly how capable those Persons from whom such Characters were first taken were to pass a right Judgment upon such subjects and also the particular Motives that biassed them to pass such Censures If Archimedes should upon his own Knowledge speak with Admiration of the Egyptian Geometry his Judgment would be very considerable But if he should speak respectfully of it only because Pythagoras did so before him it might perhaps signifie but very little 5. That excessive Commendations of any Art or Science whatsoever as also of the Learning of any particular Men or Nations only prove that the Persons who give such Characters never heard of any Thing or Person that was more excellent in that Way and therefore that Admiration may be as well supposed to proceed from their own Ignorance as from the real Excellency of the Persons or Things unless their respective Abilities are otherwise known CHAP. VIII Of the Learning of Pythagoras and the most Ancient Philosophers of Greece IN my Enquiries into the Progress of Learning during its obscurer Ages or those at least which are so to us at this Distance I shall begin with the Accounts which are given of the Learning of Pythagoras rather than those of the more Ancient Grecian Sages because his School made a much greater Figure in the World than any of those which preceded Plato and Aristotle In making a Judgment upon the Greatness of his Performances from the Greatness of his Reputation one ought to consider how near to his Time those lived whose express Relations of his Life are the oldest we have Diogenes Laërtius is the ancientest Author extant that has purposely written the Life of Pythagoras According to Menagius's Calculations he lived in M. Antoninus's Time And all that we learn from Diogenes is only that we know very little certainly about Pythagoras He cites indeed great Numbers of Books but those so very disagreeing in their Relations that a Man is confounded with their Variety Besides the Grecians magnified every Thing that they commended so much that it is hard to guess how far they may be believed when they write of Men and Actions at any Distance from their own Time Graecia Mendax was almost proverbial amongst the Romans But by what appears from the Accounts of the Life of Pythagoras he is rather to be ranked among the Law-givers with Lycurgus and Solon and his own two Disciples Zaleucus and Charondas than amongst those who really carried Learning to any considerable heighth Therefore as some other Legislators had or pretended to have Super-natural Assistances that they might create a Regard for their Laws in the People to whom they gave them so Pythagoras found out several Equivalents which did him as much Service He is said indeed to have lived many Years in Egypt and to have conversed much with the Philofophers of the East but if he invented the XLVIIth Proposition in the First Book of Euclid which is unanimously ascribed to him by all Antiquity one can hardly have a profound Esteem for the Mathematical Skill of his Masters It is indeed a very noble Proposition the Foundation of Trigonometry of universal and various Use in those curious Speculations of Incommensurable Numbers which his Disciples from him and from them the Platonists so exceedingly admired But this shews the Infancy of Geometry in his Days in that very Country which claims the Glory of Inventing it to her self It is probable indeed that the Egyptians might find it out but then we ought also to take notice that it is the only very considerable Instance of the real Learning of Pythagoras that is preserved Which is the more observable because the Pythagoreans paid the greatest Respect to their Master of any Sect whatsoever and so we may be sure that we should have heard much more of his Learning if much more could have been said And though the Books of Hermippus and Aristoxenus are lost yet Laërtius who had read them and Porphyry and Jamblichus Men of great Reading and diffuse Knowledge who after Diogenes wrote the Life of the same Pythagoras would not have omitted any material Thing of that kind if they had any where met with it Amongst his other Journies Sir William Temple mentions Pythagoras's Journy to Delphos Here by the by I must beg leave to put Sir William Temple in mind of a small Mistake that he commits in the Word Delphos both here and pag. 13. when he speaks of Thales In both Places he says that Pythagoras and Thales travelled to Delphos He might as well have said that they travelled to Aegyptum and Phoeniciam and Cretam It should be printed therefore in his next Edition to Phoenicia and Delphi For the English use the Nominative Cases of old Names when they express them in their Mother Tongue But setting that aside what this makes to his purpose is not easie to guess Apollo's Priestesses are not famous for discovering Secrets in Natural or Mathematical Matters and as for Moral Truths they might as well be known without going thither to fetch them Van Daleu in his Discourses of the Heathen Oracles has endeavoured to prove that they were only Artifices of the Priests who gave such Answers to Enquirers as they desired when they had either Power or Wealth to back their Requests If Van Daleu's Hypothesis be admitted it will strengthen my Notion of Pythagoras very much since when he did not care to live any longer in Samos because of Polycrates's Tyranny and was desirous to establish to himself a lasting Reputation for Wisdom and Learning amongst the ignorant Inhabitants of Magna Graecia where he setled upon his Retirement he was willing to have them think that Apollo was of his Side That made him establish the Doctrine of
chief Aim and therefore all Niceties of Time and Place and Person that might hurt the Flowingness of their Stile were omitted instead whereof the Great Men of their Drama's were introduced making long Speeches and such a Gloss was put upon every Thing that was told as made it appear extraordinary and Things that were wonderful and prodigious were mentioned with a particular Emphasis This Censure will not appear unjust to any Man who has read Ancient Historians with ordinary Care Polybius especially Who first of all the Ancient Historians fixes the Time of every great Action that he mentions Who assigns such Reasons for all Events as seem even at this distance neither too great nor too little Who in Military Matters takes Care not only to shew his own Skill but to make his Reader a Judge as well as himself Who in Civil Affairs makes his Judgment of the Conduct of every People from the several Constitutions of their respective Governments or from the Characters and Circumstances of the Actors themselves And last of all Who scrupulously avoids saying any Thing that might appear incredible to Posterity but represents Things in such a manner as a wise Man may believe they were transacted And yet he has neglected all that Artful Eloquence which was before so much in fashion If these therefore be the chiefest Perfections of a just History and if they can only be the Effects of a great Genius and great Study or both at least not of the last without the first we are next to enquire whether any of the Moderns have been able to attain to them And then if several may be found which in none of these Excellencies seem to yield to the noblest of all the Ancient Histories it will not be difficult to give an Answer to Sir William Temple's Question Whether D'Avila 's and Strada 's Histories be beyond those of Herodotus and Livy I shall name but two The Memoirs of Philip Comines and F. Paul 's History of the Council of Trent Philip Comines ought here to be mentioned for many Reasons For besides that he particularly excels in those very Vertues which are so remarkable in Polybius to whom Lipsius makes no Scruple to compare him he had nothing to help him but Strength of Genius assisted by Observation and Experience He owns himself that he had no Learning and it is evident to any Man that reads his Writings He flourished in a barbarous Age and died just as Learning had crossed the Alpes to get into France So that he could not by Conversation with Scholars have those Defects which Learning cures supplied This is what cannot be said of the Thucydides's Polybius's Sallusts Livies and Tacitus's of Antiquity Yet with all these Disadvantages to which this great one ought also to be added That by the Monkish Books then in vogue he might sooner be led out of the Way than if he had none at all to peruse his Stile is Masculine and significant though diffuse yet not tedious even his Repetitions which are not over-frequent are diverting His Digressions are wise proper and instructing One sees a profound Knowledge of Mankind in every Observation that he makes and that without Ill Nature Pride or Passion Not to mention that peculiar Air of Impartiality which runs through the whole Work so that it is not easie to withdraw our Assent from every Thing which he says To all which I need not add that his History never tires though immediately read after Livy or Tacitus In F. Paul's History one may also find the Excellencies before observed in Polybius and it has been nicely examined by dextrous and skilful Adversaries who have taken the Pains to weigh every Period and rectifie every Date So that besides the Satisfaction which any other admirable History would have afforded us we have the Pleasure of thinking that we may safely rely upon his Accounts of Things without being mis-guided in any one leading Particular of great moment since Adversaries who had no Inclination to spare him could not invalidate the Authority of a Book which they had so great a Desire to lessen I had gone no further than D'Avila and Strada if there were as much Reason to believe their Narratives as there is to commend their Skill in writing D'Avila must be acknowledged to be a most Entertaining Historian one that wants neither Art Genius nor Eloquence to render his History acceptable Strada imitates the old Romans so happily that those who can relish their Eloquence will be always pleased with his Upon the whole Matter one may positively say That where any Thing wherein Oratory can only claim a Share has been equally cultivated by the Moderns as by the Ancients they have equalled them at least if not out-done them setting aside any particular Graces which might as well be owing to the Languages in which they wrote as to the Writers themselves CHAP. IV. Reflections upon Monsieur Perrault 's Hypothesis That Modern Orators and Poets are more excellent than Ancient WHatever becomes of the Reasons given in the last Chapter for the Excellency of Ancient Eloquence and Poetry the Position it self is so generally held that I do not fear any Opposition here at home It is almost an Heresie in Wit among our Poets to set up any Modern Name against Homer or Virgil Horace or Terence So that though here and there one should in Discourse preferr the present Age yet scarce any Man who sets a Value upon his own Reputation will venture to assert it in Print Whether this is to be attributed to their Judgment or Modesty or both I will not determine though I am apt to believe to both because in our Neighbour-Nation which is remarkable for a good deal of what Sir William Temple calls Sufficiency some have spoken much more openly For the Members of the Academy in France who since the Cardinal de Richelieu's Time have taken so much Pains to make their Language capable of all those Beauties which they find in Ancient Authors will not allow me to go so far as I have done Monsieur Perrault their Advocate in Oratory sets the Bishop of Meaux against Pericles or rather Thucydides the Bishop of Nismes against Isocrates F. Bourdaloüe against Lysias Monsieur Voiture against Pliny and Monsieur Balzac against Cicero In Poetry likewise he sets Monsieur Boileau against Horace Monsieur Corneille and Monsieur Moliere against the Ancient Dramatick Poets In short though he owns that some amongst the Ancients had very exalted Genius's so that it may perhaps be very hard to find any Thing that comes near the Force of some of the Ancient Pieces in either Kind amongst our Modern Writers yet he affirms that Poetry and Oratory are now at a greater heighth than ever they were because there have been many Rules found out since Virgil's and Horace's Time and the old Rules likewise have been more carefully scanned than ever they were before This Hypothesis ought a little to be enquired into and
Time who was overthrown by Abraham and his Family in the Vale of Siddim the Kings of Chaldea seem to have been no other than those of Canaan Captains of Hords or Heads of Clans And Amraphel was Tributary to Chedorlaomer King of Elam whose Kingdom lay to the East of Babylon beyond the River Tigris Chushan Rishathaim King of Mesopotamia who was overthrown some Ages after by Othoniel the Israelitish Judge does not seem to have been a mighty Prince It may be said indeed that he was General to some Assyrian Monarch but that is begging the Question since there is nothing which can favour such an Assertion in the Book of Judges But when the Assyrians and Babylonians come once to be mentioned in the Jewish History they occurr in almost every Page of the Old Testament There are frequent Accounts of Pul Tiglath-Pileser Shalmanezer Sennacherib Esar-haddon Nebuchadnezzar Evil-merodach Belshazzar and who not But these Kings lived within a narrow Compass of Time the oldest of them but a few Ages before Cyrus This would not suit with that prodigious Antiquity which they challenged to themselves The Truth is Herodotus who knew nothing of it being silent Ctesias draws up a new Scheme of History much more pompous and from him or rather perhaps from Berosus who was Contemporary with Manetho and seems to have carried on the same Design for Chaldea which Manetho undertook for Egypt Diodorus Siculus Pompeius Trogus Eusebius Syncellus and all the Ancients that take notice of the Assyrian History have afterwards copied Ctesias knew he should be straitned to find Employment for so many Kings for Thirteen Hundred Years and so he says they did little memorable after Semiramis's Time Sir William Temple employs them in Gardening As if it were probable that a great Empire could lie still for above a Thousand Years or that no Popular Generals should wrest the Reins out of the Hands of such drowzy Masters in all that Time No History but this can give an Instance of a Family that lasted for above a Thousand Years without any Interruption And of all its Kings not one is said to reign less than Nineteen but some Fifty five Years The healthiest Race that ever was heard of of whom in Thirteen Hundred Years not one died an untimely Death If any Thing can be showed like this in any other History Sacred or Profane it will be easie to believe whatsoever is asserted upon this Subject If therefore the Chaldean Learning was no older than their Monarchy it was of no great Standing if compared with the Egyptian The Account of Nebuchadnezzar's Dream in the 2d Chapter of Daniel shews the Chaldean Magick to have been downright Knavery since Nebuchadnezzar might reasonably expect that those should tell him what his Dream was who pretended to interpret it when it was told them both equally requiring a super-natural Assistance Yet there lay their chiefest Strength or at least they said so Their other Learning is all lost However one can hardly believe that it was ever very great that considers how little there remains of real Value that was learnt from the Chaldeans The History of Learning is not so lamely conveyed to us but so much would in all probability have escaped the general Ship wrack as that by what was saved we might have been able to guess at what was lost If the Learning of these Ancient Chaldeans came as near that of the Arabs as their Countries did one may give a very good Judgment of its Extent Sir William Temple observes that Countries little exposed to Invasions preserve Knowledge better than others that are perpetually harrassed by a Foreign Enemy and by Consequence whatsoever Learning the Arabs had they kept unless we should suppose that they lost it through Carelesness We never read of any Conquests that pierced into the Heart of Arabia the Happy Mahomet's Country before the Beginning of the Saracen Empire It is very strange therefore if in its Passage through this noble Country inhabited by a sprightly ingenious People Learning like Quick-Silver should run through and leave so few of its Influences behind it It is certain that the Arabs were not a learned People when they over-spread Asia So that when afterwards they translated the Grecian Learning into their own Language they had very little of their own which was not taken from those Fountains Their Astronomy and Astrology was taken from Ptolemee their Philosophy from Aristotle their Medicks from Galen and so on Aristotle and Euclid were first translated into Latin from Arabick Copies and those Barbarous Translations were the only Elements upon which the Western School-men and Mathematicians built If they learnt any thing considerable elsewhere it might be Chymistry and Alchemy from the Egyptians unless we should say that they translated Synesius or Zosimus or some other Grecian Chymists Hence it follows that the Arabs borrowed the greatest part at least of their Knowledge from the Greeks though they had much greater Advantages of Communicating with the more Eastern Parts of the World than either Greeks or Romans ever had They could have acquainted us with all that was rare and valuable amongst those Ancient Sages The Saracen Empire was under one Head in Almanzor's Time and was almost as far extended Eastward as ever afterwards His Subjects had a free Passage from the Tagus to the Ganges and being united by the common Bond of the same Religion the Brachmans some of whom did in all probability embrace the Mahomet an Faith would not be shy of revealing what they knew to their Arabian Masters By this Means the Learning of the Egyptians Chaldeans Indians Greeks and Arabs ran in one common Channel For several Ages Learning was so much in Fashion amongst them and they took such Care to bring it all into their own Language that some of the learnedest Jews Maimonides in particular wrote in Arabick as much as in their own Tongue So that we might reasonably have expected to have found greater Treasures in the Writings of these learned Mahometans than ever were discovered before And yet those that have been conversant with their Books say that there is little to be found amongst them which any Body might not have understood as well as they if he had carefully studied the Writings of their Grecian Masters There have been so many Thousands of Arabick and Persick MSS. brought over into Europe that our learned Men can make as good nay perhaps a better Judgment of the Extent of their Learning than can be made at this distance of the Greek There are vast Quantities of their Astronomical Observations in the Bodleian Library and yet Mr. Greaves and Dr. Edward Bernard two very able Judges have given the World no Account of any Thing out of them which those Arabian Astronomers did not or might not have learnt from Ptolemee's Almagest if we set aside their Observations which their Grecian Masters taught them to make which to give them their due Dr. Bernard commends as much
of Measuring the Area's of many Infinities of Curvilinear Spaces whereas Archimedes laboured with great Difficulty and wrote a particular Treatise of the Quadrature of only one which is the simplest and easiest in Nature 4. The Method of Determining the Tangents of all Geometrick Curve Lines whereas the Ancients went no further than in determining the Tangents of the Circle and Conick Sections 5. The Method of Determining the Lengths of an infinite Number of Curves whereas the Ancients could never measure the Length of one If I should descend to Particulars the Time would fail me As our Algebra so also our Common Arithmetick is prodigiously more perfect than theirs of which Decimal Arithmetick and Logarithms are so evident a Proof that I need say no more about it I would not be thought however to have any Design to sully the Reputation of those Great Men Conon Archimedes Euclid Apollonius c. who if they had lived to enjoy our Assistance as we now do some of theirs would questionless have been the greatest Ornaments of this Age as they were deservedly the greatest Glory of their own Thus far Mr. Craig Those that have the Curiosity to see some of these Things proved at large which Mr. Craig has contracted into one View may be amply satisfied in Dr. Wallis's History of Algebra joyned with Gerhard Vossius's Discourses De Scientiis Mathematicis It must not here be forgotten that Abstracted Mathematical Sciences were exceedingly valued by the ancientest Philosophers None that I know of expressing a Contempt of them but Epicurus tho' all did not study them alike Plato is said to have written over the Door of his Academy Let no Man enter here who does not understand Geometry None of all the learned Ancients has been more extolled by other learned Ancients than Archimedes So that if in these Things the Moderns have made so great a Progress this affords a convincing Argument that it was not Want of Genius which obliged them to stop at or to come behind the Ancients in any Thing else CHAP. XV. Of several Instruments invented by the Moderns which have helped to advance Learning HAving now enquired into the State of Mathematicks as they relate to Lines and Numbers in general I am next to go to those Sciences which consider them as they are applied to Material Things But these being of several Sorts and of a vast Extent taking in no less than the whole Material World it ought to be observed that they cannot be brought to any great Perfection without Numbers of Tools or Arts which may be of the same Use as Tools to make the Way plain to several Things which otherwise without their Help would be inaccessible Of these Tools or Instruments some were anciently invented and those Inventions were diligently pursued Others are wholly new According to their Uses they may be ranged under these two General Heads 1. Those which are useful to all Parts of Learning though perhaps not to all alike 2. Those which are particularly subservient to a Natural Philosopher and a Mathematician Under the first Head one may place Printing and Engraving Under the Latter come Telescopes Microscopes the Thermometer the Baroscope the Air-Pump Pendulum-Clocks Chymistry and Anatomy All these but the two last were absolutely unknown to former Ages Chymistry was known to the Greeks and from them carried to the Arabs Anatomy is at least as old as Democritus and Hippocrates and among the exact Epyptians something older The Use of Printing has been so vast that every thing else wherein the Moderns have pretended to excel the Ancients is almost entirely owing to it And withal its general Uses are so obvious that it would be Time lost to enlarge upon them but it must be taken Notice of because Sir William Temple has questioned whether Printing has multiplied Books or only the Copies of them from whence he concludes that we are not to suppose that the Ancients had not equal Advantages by the Writings of those that were ancient to them as we have by the Writings of those that are ancient to us But he may easily solve his own Doubt if he does but reflect upon the Benefit to Learning which arises from the multiplying Copies of good Books For though it should be allowed that there were anciently as many Books as there are now which is scarce credible yet still the Moderns have hereby a vast Advantage because 1. Books are hereby much cheaper and so come into more Hands 2. They are much more easily read and so there is no Time lost in poring upon bad Hands which wastes Time wearies the Reader and spoils Mens Eyes 3. They can be printed with Indexes and other necessary Divisions which though they may be made in MSS. yet they will make them so voluminous and cumbersome that not one in Forty who now mind Books because they love Reading would then apply themselves to it 4. The Notice of new and excellent Books is more easily dispersed 5. The Text is hereby better preserved entire and is not so liable to be corrupted by the Ignorance or Malice of Transcribers this is of great Moment in Mathematicks where the Alteration of a Letter or a Cypher may make a Demonstration unintelligible But to say more upon this Subject would be to abuse Mens Patience since these things if not self-evident yet need no Proof Engraving upon Wood or Copper is of great Use in all those Parts of Knowledge where the Imagination must be assisted by sensible Images For want of this noble Art the Ancient Books of Natural History and Mechanical Arts are almost every where obscure in many Places unintelligible Mathematical Diagrams which need only a Ruler and a pair of Compasses have been better preserved and could with more Ease be drawn But in Anatomy in Mechanicks in Geography in all Parts of Natural History Engraving is so necessary and has been so very advantageous that without it many of those Arts and Sciences would to this Hour have received very little Increase For when the Images the Proportions and the Distances of those things wherein a Writer intends to instruct his Reader are fully and minutely engraven in Prints it not only saves Abundance of Words by which all Descriptions must of Necessity be obscured but it makes those Words which are used full and clear so that a skillful Reader is thereby enabled to pass an exact Judgment and can understand his Authors without a Master which otherwise it would be impossible to do so as to be able to discern all even the minutest Mistakes and Oversights in their Writings which puts an end to Disputes and encreases Knowledge These are general Instruments and more or less serviceable to all sorts of learned Men in their several Professions and Sciences Those that follow are more particular I shall begin with those that assist the Eye either to discern Objects that are too far off or too small The Imperfections of Distance are remedied
is to please the Audience was anciently perhaps better answered than now though a Modern Master would then have been dis-satisfied because such Consorts as the Ancient Symphonies properly were in which several Instruments and perhaps Voices played and sung the same Part together cannot discover the Extent and Perfection of the Art which here only is to be considered so much as the Compositions of our Modern Opera's From all this it may perhaps be not unreasonable to conclude that though those Charms of Musick by which Men and Beasts Fishes Fowls and Serpents were so frequently enchanted and their very Natures changed be really and irrecoverably lost yet the Art of Musick that is to say of Singing and Playing upon Harmonious Instruments is in it self much a perfecter Thing though perhaps not much pleasanter to an unskilful Audience than it ever was amongst the Ancient Greeks and Romans CHAP. XXV Of Ancient and Modern Physick AFter these Mathematical Sciences it is convenient to go to those which are more properly Physical and in our Language alone peculiarly so called What these want in Certainty they have made up in Usefulness For if Life and Health be the greatest good Things which we can enjoy here a Conjectural Knowledge that may but sometimes give us Relief when those are in danger is much more valuable than a certain knowledge of other Things which can only employ the Understanding or furnish us with such Conveniencies as may be spared since we see that several Nations which never had them lived very happily and did very great Things in the World Before I begin my Comparison between Ancient and Modern Skill in Physick it may be necessary to state the Difference between an Empirick and a Rational Physician and to enquire how far a Rational Physician may reason right as to what relates to the curing of his Patient's Distemper though his general Hypotheses be wrong and his Theories in themselves considered insufficient An Empirick is properly he who without considering the Constitution of his Patient the Symptoms of his Disease or those Circumstances of his Case which arise from outward Accidents administers such Physick as has formerly done good to some Body else that was tormented with a Disease which was called by the same Name with this that his Patient now labours under A Rational Physician is he who critically enquires into the Constitution and peculiar Accidents of Life of the Person to whom he is to administer who weighs all the known Virtues of the Medicines which may be thought proper to the Case in hand who balances all the Symptoms and from past Observations finds which have been fatal and which safe which arise from outward Accidents and which from the Disease it self And who thence collects which ought soonest to be removed which may be neglected and which should be preserved or augmented and thereupon prescribes accordingly Now it is evident that such a Man's Prescriptions may be very valuable because founded upon repeated Observations of the Phaenomena of all Diseases And he may form Secondary Theories which like Ptolemee's Eccentricks and Epicycles shall be good Guides to Practice not by giving a certain Insight into the first Causes and several Steps by which the Disease first began and was afterwards carried on but by enabling the Physician to make lucky Conjectures at proper Courses and fit Medicines whereby to relieve or cure his Patient And this may be equally successful whether he resolves every Thing into Hot or Cold Moist or Dry into Acids or Alkali's into Salt Sulphur or Mercury or into any Thing else He does not know for Instance that Spittle Bile and the Pancreatick Juice are the main Instruments of Digestion yet he sees that his Patient digests his Meat with great Difficulty He is sure that as long as that lasts the sick Man cannot have a good Habit of Body he finds that the Distemper arises sometimes though not always from a visible Cause and he has tried the Goodness of such and such Medicines in seemingly parallel Cases He may be able therefore to give very excellent Advice though he cannot perhaps dive into the Nature of the Distemper so well as another Man who having greater Anatomical Helps and being accustomed to reason upon more certain Physiological Principles has made a strict Enquiry into that very Case And so by Consequence though he cannot be said to know so much of the Essence of the Disease as that other Man yet perhaps their Method of Practice notwithstanding the great Disparity of each others Knowledge shall be in the main the same Though all this seems very certain yet in the Argument before us it is not an easie Thing to state the Question so equally as to satisfie all contending Sides He that looks into the Writings of the Generality of the Rational Physicians as they called themselves by way of Eminence that is to say of those who about Fifty Years ago set up Hippocrates and Galen as the Parents and Perfecters of Medicinal Knowledge will find throughout all their Writings great Contempt of every Thing that is not plainly deducible from those Texts On the other Hand If he dips into the Books of the Chymical Philosophers he will meet with equal Scorn of those Books and Methods which they in Derision have called Galenical And yet it is evident that practising Physicians of both Parties have often wrought very extraordinary Cures by their own Methods So that there seems to have been equal Injustice of all Hands in excluding all Methods of Cure not built upon their own Principles Here therefore without being positive in a Dispute about which the Parties concerned are not themselves agreed I shall only offer these few Things 1. That if the Greatness of any one particular Genius were all that was to be looked after Hippocrates alone seems to have been the Man whose Assertions in the Practical Part of Physick might be blindly received For he without the Help of any great Assistances that we know of did that which if it were still to do would seem sufficient to employ the united Force of more than one Age. He was scrupulously exact in distinguishing Diseases in observing the proper Symptoms of each and taking notice of their Times and Accidents thereby to make a Judgment how far they might be esteemed dangerous and how far safe Herein his particular Excellency seems to have lain and this in the Order of Knowledge is the first Thing that a Rational Physician ought to make himself Master of Which is a sure Argument that Hippocrates throughly understood what Things were necessary for him to study with the greatest Care in order to make his Writings always useful to Posterity 2. That though we should allow the Methods of Practice used by the Ancients to have been as perfect nay perfecter than those now in use which some great Men have eagerly contended for yet it does not follow that they understood the whole Compass of their Profession
Genuine Rules of Art that one would not expect in a Book of that kind In France since the Institution of the French Academy the Grammar of their own Language has been studied with great Care Isocrates himself could not be more nice in the Numbers of his Periods than these Academicians have been in setling the Phraseology in fixing the Standard of Words and in making their Sentences as well as they could numerous and flowing Their Dictionary of which a good Part is already printed Vaugelas's and Bouhours's Remarks upon the French Tongue Richelet's and Furetiere's Dictionaries with abundance of other Books of that kind which though not all written by Members of the Academy yet are all Imitations of the Patterns which they first set are Evidences of this their Care This Sir William Temple somewhere owns And though he there supposes that these Filers and Polishers may have taken away a great part of the Strength of the Tongue which in the main is true enough yet that is no Objection against their Critical Skill in Grammar upon which Account only their Labours are here taken notice of So much for the Mechanical Part of Grammar Philosophical Grammar was never that we know of much minded by the Ancients So that any great Performances of this sort are to be looked upon as Modern Increases to the Commonwealth of Learning The most considerable Book of that kind that I know of is Bishop Wilkins's Essay towards a Real Character and Philosophical Language A Work which those who have studied think they can never commend enough To this one ought to add what may be found relating to the same Subject in the Third Book of Mr. Lock 's Essay of Humane Understanding CHAP. VI. Of Ancient and Modern Architecture Statuary and Painting HItherto the Moderns seem to have had very little Reason to boast of their Acquisitions and Improvements Let us see now what they may have hereafter In those Arts sure if in any they may challenge the Preference which depending upon great Numbers of Experiments and Observations which do not every Day occurr cannot be supposed to be brought to Perfection in a few Ages Among such doubtless Architecture Sculpture and Painting may and ought here to be reckoned both because they were extreamly valued by the Ancients and do still keep up their just Price They are likewise very properly taken notice of in this Place because they have always been the Entertainments of Ingenious and Learned Men whose Circumstances would give them Opportunity to lay out Money upon them or to please themselves with other Men's Labours In these Things if we may take Men's Judgments in their own Professions the Ancients have far out-done the Moderns The Italians whose Performances have been the most considerable in this kind and who as Genuine Successors of the Old Romans are not apt to undervalue what they do themselves have for the most part given the uncontested Pre-eminence to the Ancient Greek Architects Painters and Sculptors Whose Authority we ought the rather to acquiesce in because Michael-Angelo and Bernini two wonderful Masters and not a little jealous of their Honour did always ingenuously declare that their best Pieces were exceeded by some of the ancient Statues still to be seen at Rome Here therefore I at first intended to have left off and I thought my self obliged to resign what I believed could not be maintained when Monsieur Perrault's Parallel of the Ancients and Moderns came to my Hands His Skill in Architecture and Mechanicks was sufficiently manifested long ago in his admirable Translation of and Commentaries upon Vitruvius And his long Conversation with the finest Pieces of Antiquity and of these Later Ages fitted him for judging of these Matters better than other Men. So that though there might be great Reason not to agree to his Hypothesis of the State of Ancient and Modern Eloquence and Poesie yet in Things of this Nature where the Mediums of Judging are quite different and where Geometrical Rules of Proportion which in their own Nature are unalterable go very far to determine the Question his Judgment seemed to be of great weight I shall therefore chuse rather to give a short View of what he says upon these Subjects than to pass any Censure upon them of my own Of Architecture he says That though the Moderns have received the Knowledge of the Five Orders from the Ancients yet if they employ it to better Purposes if their Buildings be more useful and more beautiful then they must be allowed to be the better Architects For it is in Architecture as it is in Oratory as he that lays down Rules when and how to use Metaphors Hyperbole's Prosopopoeia's or any other Figures of Rhetorick may very often not be so good an Orator as he that uses them judiciously in his Discourses So he that teaches what a Pillar an Architrave or a Cornice is and that instructs another in the Rules of Proportion so as to adjust all the Parts of each of the several Orders aright may not be so good an Architect as he that builds a magnificent Temple or a noble Palace that shall answer all those Ends for which such Structures are designed That the chief Reason why the Doric the Ionic or the Corinthian Models have pleased so much is partly because the Eye has been long accustomed to them and partly because they have been made use of by Men who understood and followed those other Rules which will eternally please upon the Score of real Usefulness whereas the Five Orders owe their Authority to Custom rather than to Nature That these Universal Rules are To make those Buildings which will bear it lofty and wide In Stone-work to use the largest the smoothest and the evenest Stones To make the Joints almost imperceptible To place the perpendicular Parts of the Work exactly Perpendicular and the Horizontal Parts exactly Horizontal To support the weak Parts of the Work by the strong to cut Square Figures perfectly Square and Round Figures perfectly Round To hew the whole exactly true and to fix all the Corners of the Work evenly as they ought to be That these Rules well observed will always please even those who never understood one single Term of Art Whereas the other accidental Beauties such as he supposes Doric Ionic or Corinthian Work to be please only because they are found together with these though their being the most conspicuous Parts of a Building made them be first observed From whence Men began to fansie Inherent Beauties in that which owes the greatest part of its Charms to the good Company in which it is taken notice of and so in time delighted when it was seen alone That otherwise it would be impossible that there should be so great a Variety in the Assigning of the Proportions of the several Orders no two eminent Architects ever keeping to the same Measure though they have neither spoiled nor lessened the Beauty of their Works That if we
we have had Masters in both these Arts who have deserved a Rank with those that flourished in the last Age after they were again restored to these Parts of the World CHAP. VII General Reflections relating to the following Chapters With an Account of Sir William Temple 's Hypothesis of the History of Learning IF the bold Claims of confident and numerous Pretenders might because of their Confidence and Numbers be much relied on it were an easie Thing to determine the present Question without any further Trouble The Generality of the Learned have given the Ancients the Preference in those Arts and Sciences which have hitherto been considered But for the Precedency in those Parts of Learning which still remain to be enquired into the Moderns have put in their Claim with great Briskness Among this Sort I reckon Mathematical and Physical Sciences considered in their largest Extent These are Things which have no Dependence upon the Opinions of Men for their Truth they will admit of fixed and undisputed Mediums of Comparison and Judgment So that though it may be always debated who have been the best Orators or who the best Poets yet it cannot always be a Matter of Controversie who have been the greatest Geometers Arithmeticians Astronomers Musicians Anatomists Chymists Botanists or the like because a fair Comparison between the Inventions Observations Experiments and Collections of the contending Parties must certainly put an End to the Dispute and give a more full Satisfaction to all Sides The Thing contended for on both Sides is the Knowledge of Nature what the Appearances are which it exhibits and how they are exhibited thereby to show how they may be enlarged and diversified and Impediments of any sort removed In order to this it will be necessary 1. To find out all the several Affections and Properties of Quantity abstractedly considered with the Proportions of its Parts and Kinds either severally considered or compared with or compounded with one another either as they may be in Motion or at Rest. This is properly the Mathematician's Business 2. To collect great Numbers of Observations and to make a vast Variety of Experiments upon all sorts of Natural Bodies And because this cannot be done without proper Tools 3. To contrive such Instruments by which the Constituent Parts of the Universe and of all its Parts even the most minute or the most remote may lie more open to our View and their Motions or other Affections be better calculated and examined than could otherwise have been done by our unassisted Senses 4. To range all the several Species of Natural Things under proper Heads to assign fit Characteristicks or Marks whereby they may be readily found out and distinguished from one another 5. To adapt all the Catholick Affections of Matter and Motion to all the known Appearances of Things so as to be able to tell how Nature works and in some particular Cases to command her This will take in Astronomy Mechanicks Opticks Musick with the other Physico-Mathematical and Physico-Mechanical Parts of Knowledge as also Anatomy Chymistry with the whole Extent of Natural History It will help us to make a just Comparison between the Ancient and Modern Physicks that so we may certainly determine who Philosophized best Aristotle and Democritus or Mr. Boyle and Mr. Newton In these Things therefore the Comparison is to be made wherein one can go no higher than the Age of Hypocrates Aristotle and Theophrastus because the Writings of the Philosophers before them are all lost It may therefore be plausibly objected that this is no fair Way of Proceeding because the Egyptians and Chaldaeans were famous for very many Parts of real Learning long before from whom Pythagoras Thales Plato and all the other Graecian Philosophers borrowed what they knew This Sir William Temple insists at large upon so that it will be necessary to examine the Claims of these Nations to Universal Learning In doing of which I shall follow Sir William Temple's Method and first give a short Abstract of his Hypothesis and then enquire how far it may be relied on Sir William Temple tells us That the chiefest Argument that is produced in behalf of the Moderns is That they have the Advantage of the Ancients Discoveries to help their own So that like Dwarfs upon Giants Shoulders they must needs see farther than the Giants themselves To weaken this we are told That those whom we call Ancients are Moderns if compared to those who are ancienter than they And that there were vast Lakes of Learning in Egypt Chaldea India and China where it stagnated for many Ages till the Greeks brought Buckets and drew it out The Question which is first to be asked here is Where are the Books and Monuments wherein these Treasures were deposited for so many Ages And because they are not to be found Sir William Temple makes a Doubt Whether Books advance any other Science beyond the particular Records of Actions or Registers of Time He may resolve it soon if he enquires how far a Man can go in Astronomical Calculations for which the Chaldeans are said to be so famous without the Use of Letters The Peruan Antiquities which he there alledges for Twelve or Thirteen Generations from Mango Capac to Atahualpa were not of above Five Hundred Years standing The Mexican Accounts were not much older and yet these though very rude needed Helps to be brought down to us The Perisan Conveyances of Knowledge according to Garçilasso de la Vega were not purely Traditionary but were Fringes of Cotton of several Colours tied and woven with a vast Variety of Knots which had all determinate Meanings and so supplied the Use of Letters in a tolerable Degree And the Mexican Antiquities were preserved after a sort by Pictures of which we have a Specimen in Purchas's Pilgrim So that when Sir William Temple urges the Traditions of these People to prove that Knowledge may be conveyed to Posterity without Letters he proves only what is not disputed namely That Knowledge can be imperfectly conveyed to Posterity without Letters not that Tradition can preserve Learning as well as Books or something equivalent But since Sir William Temple lays no great Weight upon this Evasion I ought not to insist any longer upon it He says therefore That it is a Question whether the Invention of Printing has multiplied Books or only the Copies of them since if we believe that there were 600000 Books in the Ptolemaean Library we shall hardly pretend to equal it by any of ours nor perhaps by all put together that is we shall be scarce able to produce so many Originals that have lived any Time and thereby given Testimony of their having been thought worth preserving All this as it is urged by Sir William Temple is liable to great Exception For 1. If we should allow that there is no Hyperbole in the Number of Books in the Ptolemaean Library yet we are not to take our Estimate by our
Way of Reckoning Every Oration of Demosthenes and Isocrates every Play of Aeschylus or Aristophanes every Discourse of Plato or Aristotle was anciently called a Volume This will lessen the Number to us who take whole Collections of every Author's Works in one Lump and call them accordingly in our Catalogues if printed together but by one Title 2. Sir William Temple seems to take it for granted that all these Books were Originals that is to say Books worth preserving which is more than any Man can now prove I suppose he himself believes that there were Ancients of all Sorts and Sizes as well as there are Moderns now And he that raises a Library takes in Books of all Values since bad Books have their Uses to Learned Men as well as good ones So that for any Thing we know to the contrary there might have been in this Alexandrian Library a great Number of Scribblers that like Mushrooms or Flies are born and die in small Circles of Time 3. The World can make a better Judgment of the Value of what is lost at least as it relates to the present Enquiry than one at first View might perhaps imagine The lost Books of the Antiquity of several Nations of their Civil History of the Limits of their several Empires and Commonwealths of their Laws and Manners or of any Thing immediately relating to any of these are not here to be considered because it cannot be pretended that the Moderns could know any of these Things but as they were taught So neither is what may have related to Ethicks Politicks Poesie and Oratory here to be urged since in those Matters the Worth of Ancient Knowledge has already been asserted So that one is only to enquire what and how great the Loss is of all those Books upon Natural or Mathematical Arguments which were preserved in the Alexandrian Asiatick and Roman Libraries or mentioned in the Writings of the Ancient Philosophers and Historians By which Deduction the former Number will be yet again considerably lessened Now a very true Judgment of Ancient Skill in Natural History may be formed out of Pliny whose Extracts of Books still extant are so particular for the present Purpose that there is Reason to believe they were not made carelesly of those that are lost Galen seems to have read whatever he could meet with relating to Medicine in all its Parts And the Opinions of Abundance of Authors whose Names are no where else preserved may be discovered out of his Books of the famous ones especially whom at every Turn he either contradicts or produces to fortifie his own Assertions Ptolemee gives an Account of the old Astronomy in his Almagest Very many Particulars of the Inventions and Methods of Ancient Geometers are to be found in the Mathematical Collections of Pappus The Opinions of the different Sects of Philosophers are well enough preserved in the entire Treatises of the several Philosophers who were of their Sects or in the Discourses of others who occasionally or expresly confute what they say So that I am apt to think that the Philosophical and Mathematical Learning of the Ancients is better conveyed to us than the Civil the Books which treated of those Subjects suiting better the Genius's of several Men and of several Nations too For which Reason the Arabs translated the most considerable Greek Books of this kind as Euclid Apollonius Aristotle Epictetus Cebes and Abundance more that had written of Philosophy or Mathematicks into their own Language whilst they let Books of Antiquity and Civil History lie unregarded Sir William Temple's next Enquiry is From whence both the Ancients and Moderns have received their Knowledge His Method does not seem to be very natural nor his Question very proper since if Discoveries are once made it is not so material to know who taught the several Inventors as what these Inventors first taught others But setting that aside the Summ of what he says in short is this The Moderns gather all their Learning out of Books in Universities which are but dumb Guides that can lead Men but one Way without being able to set them right if they should wander from it These Books besides are very few the Remains of the Writings of here and there an Author that wrote from the Time of Hippocrates to M. Antoninus in the Compass of Six or Seven Hundred Years Whereas Thales and Pythagoras took another sort of a Method Thales acquired his Knowledge in Egypt Phoenicia Delphos and Crete Pythagoras spent Twenty Two Years in Egypt and Twelve Years more in Chaldea and then returned laden with all their Stores and not contented with that went into Ethiopia Arabia India and Crete and visited Delphos and all the renowned Oracles in the World Lest we should wonder why Pythagoras went so far we are told that the Indian Brachmans were so careful to educate those who were intended for Scholars that as soon as the Mother 's found themselves with Child much Thought and Diligence was employed about their Diet and Entertainment to furnish them with pleasant Imaginations to compose their Mind and their Sleeps with the best Temper during the Time that they carried their Burthen It is certain that they must needs have been very learned since they were obliged to spend Thirty Seven Years in getting Instruction Their Knowledge was all Traditional they thought the World was round and made by a Spirit they believed the Transmigration of Souls and they esteemed Sickness such a Mark of Intemperance that when they found themselves indisposed they died out of Shame and Sullenness though some lived an Hundred and Fifty or Two Hundred Years These Indians had their Knowledge in all probability from China a Country where Learning had been in Request from the Time of Fohius their first King It is to be presumed that they communicated of their Store to other Nations though they themselves have few Foot-steps of it remaining besides the Writings of Confucius which are chiefly Moral and Political because one of their Kings who desired that the Memory of every Thing should begin with himself caused Books of all sorts not relating to Physick and Agriculture to be destroyed From India Learning was carried into Ethiopia and Arabia thence by the Way of the Red Sea it came into Phoenicia and the Egyptians learnt it of the Ethiopians This is a short Account of the History of Learning as Sir William Temple has deduced it from its most ancient Beginnings The Exceptions which may be made against it are many and yet more against the Conclusions which he draws from it For though it be certain that the Egyptians had the Grounds and Elements of most parts of real Learning among them earlier than the Greeks yet that is no Argument why the Grecians should not go beyond their Teachers or why the Moderns might not out-do them both Before I examine Sir William Temple's Scheme Step by Step I shall offer as the Geometers
forementioned Discourse of Conringius One may justly wonder that there should have been so noble an Art as that of turning baser Metals into Gold and Silver so long in the World and yet that there should be so very little if any thing said of it in the Writings of the Ancients To remove this Prejudice therefore all the fabulous Stories of the Greeks have by Men of fertile Inventions been given out to be disguised Chymical Arcana Jason's Golden Fleece which he brought from Colchis was only a Receipt to make the Philosopher's Stone and Medea restored her Father-in-Law Aeson to his Youth again by the Grand Elixir Borrichius is very confident that the Egyptian Kings built the Pyramids with the Treasures that their Furnaces afforded them since if there were so many Thousand Talents expended in Leeks and Onions as Herodotus tells us there were which must needs have been an inconsiderable Sum in Comparison of the whole Expence of the Work one cannot imagine how they could have raised Money enough to defray the Charge of the Work any other Way And since Borrichius Jacobus Tollius has set out a Book called Fortuita wherein he makes most of the Old Mythology to be Chymical Secrets But though Borrichius may believe that he can find some obscure Hints of this Great Work in the Heathen Mythologists and in some scattered Verses of the Ancient Poets which according to him they themselves did not fully understand when they wrote them yet this is certain That the ancientest Chymical Writers now extant cannot be proved to have been so old as the Age of Augustus Conringius believes that Zosimus Panopolita is the oldest Chymical Author that we have whom he sets lower than Constantine the Great That perhaps may be a Mistake for Borrichius who had read them both in MS. in the French King's Library brings very plausible Arguments to prove that Olympiodorus who wrote Commentaries upon some of the Chymical Discourses of Zosimus was 150 Years older than Constantine because he mentions the Alexandrian Library in the Temple of Serapis as actually in being which in Ammianus Marcellinus's Time who was contemporary with Julian the Apostate was only talked of as a thing destroyed long before I don't mean that which was burnt in Julius Caesar's Time but one afterwards erected out of the scattered Remains that were saved from that great Conflagration which is mentioned by Tertullian under the Name of Ptolemee's Library at Alexandria If this Zosimus is the same whom Galen mentions for a Remedy for sore Eyes in his 4th Book of Topical Medicines then both he and Olympiodorus might have been considerably older and yet have lived since our Blessed Saviour's Time However be their Age what it will they wrote to themselves and their Art was as little known afterwards as it was before Julius Firmicus is the First Author that has mentioned Alchemy either by Name or by an undisputed Circumlocution and he dedicated his Book of Astrology to Constantine the Great Manilius indeed who is supposed to have lived in Augustus's Time in the 4th Book of his Astronomicon where he gives an Account of those that are born under Capricorn has these Words scrutari caeca metalla Depositas opes terraeque exuere venas Materiemque manu certâ duplicarier arte which last Verse seems to be a Description of Alchemy But besides that the Verse is suspected to be spurious even the Age of Manilius himself is not without Controversie some making him contemporary with the Younger Theodosius and consequently later than Firmicus himself We may expect to have this Question determined when my most Learned Friend Mr. Bentley shall oblige the World with his Censures and Emendations of that Elegant Poet. But if these Grecian Chymists have the utmost Antiquity allowed them that Borrichius desires it will signifie little to deduce their Art from Hermes since Men might pretend that their Art was derived from him in Zosimus's Days and yet come many Thousand Years short of it if we follow the Accounts of Manetho Wherefore though this is but a negative Argument yet it seems to be unanswerable because if there had been such an Art some of the Greeks and Romans who were successively Masters of Egypt would have mentioned it at least before Zosimus's Time Such a Notice whether with Approbation or Contempt had been sufficient to ascertain the Reality of such a Tradition Tacitus tells us that Nero sent into Africa to find some Gold that was pretended to be hid under Ground This would have been an excellent Opportunity for him to have examined into this Tradition or to have punished those who either falsly pretended to an Art which they had not or would not discover the true Secret which in his Opinion would have been equally criminal and had Nero done it Pliny would have told us of it who was very inquisitive to collect all the Stories he could find of every thing that he treats about whereof Gold is one that is not slightly passed over and besides he never omits a Story because it appears strange and incredible if we may judge of what he has left out by what he has put in but often ranges the wonderful Qualities of natural Bodies under distinct Heads that they might be the more observed To evade the Force of this Argument Borrichius says that the Egyptians were afraid of their Conquerours and so industriously concealed their Art But there is a wide Difference between concealing the Rules and Precepts of an Art and concealing the Memory that ever there was such an Art If it was ever known before the Persian Conquest as by his Account of the Erection of the Pyramids which were built many Ages before Cambyses's Time it is plain he believes it was though we should allow it to have been in few Hands it is not credible that this Art of making Gold should never have been pretended to before Dioclesian's Time who is reported by Suidas to have burnt great Numbers of Chymical Book which gave an Account of the Process Whereas afterwards ever now and then Footsteps of cheating Alchemists are to be met with in the Greek Historians It was not possible to pretend to greater Secrecy in the Manner of their Operations than is now to be found in all the Writings of Modern Adept Philosophers as they call themselves And yet these Men who will not reveal their Process would think themselves affronted if any Man should question the real Existence of their Art But the Hypothesis of those who find Chymical Secrets in Homer Virgil and the rest of the ancient Poets is liable to several Exceptions taken Notice of neither by Conringius nor Borrichius 1. They say that when Jason heard that the King of Colchis had a Book writ upon a Ram's-skin wherein was the Process of the Philosopher's Stone he went with the Argonauts to fetch it Here it may be objected 1. That it is not likely that Sesostris who conquered Colchis would
themselves that there is a particular Nerve that goes from the Heart to the little Finger of the Left-Hand for which Reason they always wore Rings upon that Finger and the Priests dipped that Finger in their perfumed Ointments this being ridiculed by Conringius Borrichius assures us that he always found something to countenance this Observation upon cutting of his Nails to the quick Pliny in the 37 th Chapter of the 11 th Book of his Natural History and Censorinus in the 17 th Chapter of his little Book De Die Natali give this following Reason from Dioscorides the Astrologer why a Man cannot live above a Hundred Years because the Alexandrian Embalmers observed a constant Increase and Diminution of Weight of the Hearts of those sound Persons whom they opened whereby they judged of their Age. They found that the Hearts of Infants of a Year old weighed two Drachms and this Weight encreased Annually by two Drachms every Year till Men came to the Age of Fifty Years At which Time they as gradually decreased till they came to an Hundred when for want of a Heart they must necessarily die To these two Instances of the Criticalness of Egyptian Anatomy I shall add one of their Curiosities in Natural Enquiries and that is their Knowledge of the Cause of the Annual Overflowing of the Nile This which was the constant Wonder of the Old World was a Phaenomenon seldom over-looked by the Greek Philosophers Seven of whose Opinions are reckoned up by Plutarch in the First Chapter of the Fourth Book of his Opinions of the Philosophers If Curiosity generally attends a Desire of Knowledge and grows along with it then the Egyptian Priests were inexcusably negligent that they did not know that the swelling of the Nile proceeded from the Rains that fell in Ethiopia which raising the River at certain Seasons made that overflowing of the Flats of Egypt One would think that in Sesostris's Time the Egyptian Priests had Access enough into Ethiopia and whoever had once been in that Country could have resolved that Problem without any Philosophy It was known indeed in Plato's Time for then the Priests told it to Eudoxus but Thales Democritus and Herodotus who had all enquired of the Egyptians give such uncouth Reasons as shew that they only spoke by guess Thales thinks that the Etesian Winds blew at that Time of the Year against the Mouths of the River so that the fresh Water finding no Vent was beaten back upon the Land Democritus supposes that the Northern Snows being melted by the Summer Heats are drawn up in Vapours into the Air which Vapours circulating towards the South are by the Coldness of the Etesian Winds condensed into Rain by which the Nile is raised Herodotus thinks that an equal Quantity of Water comes from the Fountains in Summer and Winter only in Summer there are greater Quantities of Water drawn up by the Sun and in Winter less and so by Consequence all that Time it overflowed Democritus's Opinion of the Phaenomenon seems not amiss though his Hypothesis of the Cause of it is wrong in all Probability Yet it is plain That Plutarch did not believe it to be the same with that which the Egyptian Priests gave to Eudoxus which is the only true one because he sets them both down apart The Cause of this wonderful Phaenomenon could not be pretended to be a Secret no Honour could be got by concealing a thing the pretended Ignorance whereof was rather a Disgrace Those Egyptian Priests whose Business it was to gather Knowledge must have had an extraordinary Love for a sedentary Life or have been averse to inform themselves from others more than the rest of Mankind who would not be at the Pains either to learn what Sesostris's Soldiers could have told them or to go about Two Hundred Miles Southward to search for that which they must certainly have often reasoned about if they were such Philosophers as they pretended to be Nay by the Curiosity of the Greeks we are sure they did reason about it they thought it as much a Wonder as we can do now Rather more because they knew of no other Rivers that overflow at periodical Seasons like it as some are now known to do in the East-Indies Upon the whole Matter after a particular Search into the whole Extent of Egyptian Learning there seems to be no Reason to give the Egyptians the Preeminence in point of Knowledge above all Mankind However considering the great Labour which is requisite to form the First Notions of any part of Learning they deserve great Applause for what they discovered and ought to have proportionable Grains of Allowance for what they left unfinished So that when the Holy Scriptures assure us that Moses was skilled in all the Learning of the Egyptians they give him the greatest Character for humane Knowledge that could then be given to any Man The Egyptian Performances in Architecture were very wonderful and the Character which Hadrian the Emperour gives them that they found Employments for all Sorts of Persons the Blind the Lame the Gouty as well as the strong and healthy shews that it was natural to the Egyptians to be always busied about something useful The Art of Brewing Mault-drinks was very anciently ascribed to the Egyptians as the first Inventors for which these Northern Nations are not a little beholding to them Their Laws have by those who have taken the greatest Pains to destroy the Reputation of their Learning in other things been acknowledged to be very wise and worth going so far as Pythagoras Solon and Lycurgus did to fetch them So that if Sir William Temple had extolled their Learning with any other Design than that of disparaging the Knowledge of the present Age there would have been no Reason to oppose his Assertions CHAP. XI Of the Learning of the Ancient Chaldeans and Arabians THE Chaldeans and the Arabs are the People that lie next in Sir William Temple's Road. We may pronounce with some Certainty 1. That the Chaldean Astronomy could not be very valuable since as we know from Vitruvius and others they had not discovered that the Moon is an Opake Body Whether their Astronomical Observations were older than their Monarchy is uncertain If they were not then in Alexander the Great 's Time they could not challenge an Antiquity of above Five or Six Hundred Years I mention Alexander because he is said to have sent vast Numbers of Observations from Babylon to his Master Aristotle The Assyrian Monarchy of which the Chaldean might not improperly be called a Branch pretends indeed to great Antiquity Great Things are told of Ninus and Semiramis who is more than once mentioned by Sir William Temple in these Essays for her Victories and her Skill in Gardening but these Accounts are very probably fabulous for the following Reasons Till the Time of Tiglath-Pileser and Pul we hear no News of any Assyrian Monarchs in the Jewish History In Amraphel's
own Assertions clearly and distinctly but to carry our Speculations further than other Men have carried theirs upon the same Arguments it has not only been much cultivated by Modern Philosophers but as far pursued as ever it was by the Ancients For hereby have the late Enquiries been made into Physical Metaphysical and Mathematical Matters the Extent whereof is hereafter to be examined Hereby the Ancient Mathematicians made their Discoveries and when they had done they concealed their Art for though we have many noble Propositions of theirs yet we have few Hints how they found them out since the Knowledge of the fore-going Books in Euclid's Elements is necessary to explain the Subsequent but is of little or no Use to help us to find out any Propositions in the subsequent Books which are not immediate Corollaries from what went before in case those Books had been lost Whether the Moderns have been deficient in this noble Part of Logick may be seen by those who will compare Des Cartes's Discourse of Method Mr. Lock 's Essay of Humane Understanding and Tschirnhaus's Medicina Mentis with what we have of the Ancients concerning the Art of Thinking Where though it may be pretended that their Thoughts and Discoveries are not entirely new in themselves yet to us at least they are so since they are not immediately owing to ancient Assistances but to their own Strength of Thought and Force of Genius And since this Art is indeed the Foundation of all Knowledge I ought to take notice that my Lord Bacon and Des Cartes were the two Great Men who both found Fault with the Logick of the Schools as insufficient of it self for the great Design of Logick which is the Advancement of real Learning and got Authority enough to persuade the World in a very great Degree that other Methods must be taken besides making Syllogisms and ranking the Sorts of Things under Predicaments and Predicables by those who would go much farther than their Predecessors went before them The true Use of the common Logick being rather to explain what we know already and to detect the Fallacies of our Adversaries than to find that out of which we before were ignorant So that the Moderns have enlarged its Bottom and by adding that Desideratum which the Ancients either did not perfectly know or which is worse did invidiously conceal namely the Method of discovering unknown Truths as Monsieur Tschirnhaus calls it have if not made it perfect yet put it into such a Posture as that future Industry may very happily compleat it Metaphysicks is properly that Science which teaches us those Things that are out of the Sphere of Matter and Motion and is conversant about God and Spirits and Incorporeal Substances Of these Things Plato and his Disciples wrote a great deal They plainly saw that something beyond Matter was requisite to create and preserve the August Frame of the World If we abstract from Revelation the Cartesians discourse more intelligibly concerning them than any of the Ancients So that though very many of their particular Notions as also of F. Mallebranche's M. Poyret's and other Modern Metaphysicians are justly liable to Exception yet the main Foundations upon which they reason are for the most part real and so by Consequence the Superstructures are not entirely fantastical And therefore they afford a vast Number of Hints to those who love to apply their Thoughts that Way which are useful to enlarge Men's Understandings and to guide their Manners This which is strictly true of the Modern Metaphysicks is as much as can be said of the Ancient And because a Comparison cannot be made without reading their several Writings the surest Way to try the Truth of this Proposition will be to read Plato and his Commentators and along with them Des Cartes's Meditations Velthuysius de Initiis primae Philosophiae Mallebranche's Recherche de la Verité Poyret's Cogitationes de Deo and Mr. Lock 's Essay of Humane Understanding already mentioned This may be done without undervaluing what the Ancients wrote upon these noble Subjects And the Question is not Whether they were great Men But Whether the Moderns have said any Thing upon these Matters without Copying out of other Men's Writings Which unless we will do them Wrong we are bound to say they have CHAP. XIV Of Ancient and Modern Geometry and Arithmetick IN the Method which I set to my self in these Reflections I chose to begin with an Enquiry into those Sciences whose Extent is more liable to be contested and so onwards to those which may more easily be determined Monsieur Perrault who has not finished his Parallel that I know of took it for granted that if the Prize were granted to the Moderns in Eloquence in Poesie in Architecture in Painting and in Statuary the Cause would be given up in every Thing else and he as the declared Advocate for the Moderns might go on triumphantly with all the rest Wherein possibly he was not in the main much mistaken How he manages the remaining Part of his Parallel I know not I intend to begin with Abstracted Mathematicks both because all its Propositions are of Eternal Truth and besides are the Genuine Foundations upon which all real Physiology must be built The Method which I shall follow is this 1. I shall enquire into the State of Ancient and Modern Mathematicks without any particular Application of the Properties of the several Lines and Numbers Surfaces and Solids to Physical Things 2 I shall enquire what new Instruments have been invented or old ones improved by which the Knowledge of Nature of any sort has been or may be further enlarged 3. I shall enquire whether any Improvements have been actually made of Natural History and of any Physico-Mathematical or Physical Sciences such as Astronomy Musick Opticks Medicks and the like 4. From all this I shall endeavour to pass a Judgment upon the Ancient and Modern Ways of Philosophizing concerning Nature in general and its principal Phaenomena or Appearances I begin with Geometry and Arithmetick because they are general Instruments whereby we come to the Knowledge of many of the abstrusest Things in Nature since as Plato said of old God always Geometrizes in all his Works That this Comparison might be the more exact I desired my learned and worthy Friend Mr. John Craige to give me his Thoughts upon this Matter His own learned Writings upon the most difficult Parts of Geometry for such are the Quadratures of Curve Lines will be sufficient Vouchers for his Skill in these Things I shall set down what he says in his own Words If we take a short View of the Geometry of the Ancients it appears that they considered no Lines except Streight Lines the Circle and the Conick Sections As for the Spiral the Quadratrix the Conchoid the Cissoid and a few others they made little or no Account of them It is true they have given us many excellent and useful Theorems concerning the Properties
Microscopes found that the Cortical Part of the Brain consists of an innumerable Company of very small Glandules which are all supplied with Blood by Capillary Arteries and that the Animal Spirit which is separated from the Mass of the Blood in these Glandules is carried from them into the Medulla Oblongata through little Pipes whereof one belongs to every Gland whose other End is inserted into the Medulla Oblongata and that these Numberless Pipes which in the Brain of some Fishes look like the Teeth of a small Ivory Comb are properly that which all Anatomists after Piccolhomineus have called the Corpus callosum or the Medullar Part of the Brain This Discovery destroys the Ancient Notions of the Uses of the Ventricles of the Brain and makes it very probable that those Cavities are only Sinks to carry off excrementitious Humours and not Store-Houses of the Animal Spirit It shews likewise how little they knew of the Brain who believed that it was an uniform Substance Some of the Ancients disputed whether the Brain were not made to cool the Heart Now though these are ridiculed by Galen so that their Opinions are not imputable to those who never held them yet they shew that these famous Men had examined these things very superficially For no Man makes himself ridiculous if he can help it and now that Mankind are satisfied by ocular Demonstration that the Brain is the Original of the Nerves and the Principle of Sense and Motion he would be thought out of his Wits that should doubt of this Primary use of the Brain though formerly when things had not been so experimentally proved Men might talk in the dark and assign such Reasons as they could think of without the Suspicion of being ignorant or impertinent The Eye is so very remarkable a Member and has so many Parts peculiar to its self that the Ancients took great Notice of it They found its Humours the watry crystalline and glassy and all its Tunicles and gave a good Description of them but the Optick Nerve the aqueous Ducts which supply the watry Humour and the Vessels which carry Tears were not enough examined The first was done by Dr. Briggs who has found that in the Tunica Retiformis which is contiguous to the glassy Humour the Filaments of the Optick Nerve there expanded lie in a most exact and regular Order all parallel one to another which when they are united afterwards in the Nerve are not shuffled confusedly together but still preserve the same Order till they come to the Brain The crystalline Humour had already been discovered to be of a Double-Convex Figure made of Two unequal Segments of Spheres and not perfectly spherical as the Ancients thought So that this further Discovery made by Dr. Briggs shews evidently why all the Parts of the Image are so distinctly carried to the Brain since every Ray strikes upon a several Filament of the Optick Nerve and all those strings so struck are moved equably at the same Time For want of knowing the Nature and Laws of Refraction which have been exactly stated by Modern Mathematicians the Ancients discoursed very lamely of Vision This made Galen think that the crystalline Humour was the Seat of Vision whose only Use is to refract the Rays as the known Experiment of a dark Room with one only Hole to let in Light through which a most exact Land-skip of every thing without will be represented in its proper Colours Heights and Distances upon a Paper placed in the Focus of the Convex Glass in the Hole which Experiment is to be found in almost every Book of Opticks does plainly prove Since the same thing will appear if the crystalline Humour taken out of an Ox's or a Man's Eye be placed in the Hole instead of the Glass The Way how the watry Humour of the Eye when by Accident lost may be and is constantly supplied was first found out and described by Monsieur Nuck who discovered a particular Canal of Water arising from the internal Carotidal Artery which creeping along the Sclerotic Coat of the Eye perforates the Cornea near the Pupil and then branching its self curiously about the Iris enters and supplies the watry Humour As to the Vessels which moisten the Eye that it may move freely in its Orbit the Ancients knew in general that there were Two Glands in the Corners of the Eyes but the Lympheducts through which the Moisture is conveyed from those Glands were not fully traced till Steno and Briggs described them so that there is just the same Difference between our Knowledge and the Ancients in this particular as there is between his Knowledge who is sure there is some Road or other from this Place to that and his who knows the whole Course and all the Turnings of the Road and can describe it on a Map The Instruments by which Sounds are conveyed from the Drum to the Auditory Nerves in the inner Cavities of the Ear were very little if at all known to the Ancients In the First Cavity there are Four small Bones the Hammer the Anvil the Stirrup and a small flattish Bone just in the Articulation of the Anvil and the Stirrup It is now certainly known that when the Drum is struck upon by the external Air these little Bones which are as big in an Infant as in adult Persons move each other the Drum moves the Hammer That the Anvil That the Stirrup which opens the oval Entrance into the Second Cavity None of these Bones were ever mentioned by the Ancients who only talked of Windings and Turnings within the Os Petrosum that were covered by the large Membrane of the Drum Jacobus Carpus one of the first Restorers of Anatomy in the last Age found out the Hammer and the Anvil Realdus Columbus discovered the Stirrup and Franciscus Sylvius the little flattish Bone by him called Os Orbiculare but mistook its Position He thought it had been placed Sideways of the Head of the Stirrup whereas Monsieur du Verney finds that it lies in the Head of the Stirrup between that and the Anvil The other inner Cavities were not better understood the spiral Bones of the Cochlea that are divided into Two distinct Cavities like Two pair of Winding-Stairs parallel to one another which turn round the same Axis with the Three semicircular Canals of the Labyrinthus into which the inner Air enters and strikes upon the small Twigs of the Auditory Nerves inserted into those small Bones were things that they knew so little of that they had no Names for them and indeed till Monsieur du Verney came those Mazes were but negligently at least unsuccessfully examined by Moderns as well as Ancients it being impossible so much as to form an Idea of what any former Anatomists asserted of the wonderful Mechanism of those little Bones before he wrote if we set aside Monsieur Perrault's Anatomy of those Parts which came out a
receiving Blood from the Heart and going from it Which also was the constant Way of Speaking of Galen and all the Ancients Now no Man that can express himself properly will ever say That any Liquors are carried away from any Cistern as from a Fountain or Source through those Canals which to his Knowledge convey Liquors to that Cistern 4. Hippocrates says the Blood is carried into the Lungs from the Heart for the Nourishment of the Lungs without assigning any other Reason These seem to be positive Arguments that Hippocrates knew nothing of this Matter and accordingly all his Commentators Ancient and Modern before Dr. Harvey never interpreted the former Passages of the Circulation of the Blood Neither would Vander Linden in all probability if Dr. Harvey had not helped him to the Notion which he was then resolved to find in Hippocrates whom he supposed not the Father only but the Finisher also of the whole Medical Art It is pretended to by none of the Ancients or rather their Admirers for them after Hippocrates As for Galen any Man that reads what he says of the Heart and Lungs in the 6th Book of his De Usu Partium must own that he does not discourse as if he were acquainted with Modern Discoveries and therefore it is not so much as pretended that he knew this Recurrent Motion of the Blood Which also further shews that if Hippocrates did know it he explained himself so obscurely that Galen could not understand him who in all probability understood Hippocrates's Text as well as any of his Commentators who have written since the Greek Tongue and much more since the Ionic Dialect has ceased to be a living Language Since the Ancients have no Right to so noble a Discovery it may be worth while to enquire to whom of the Moderns the Glory of it is due for this is also exceedingly contested The first Step that was made towards it was the finding that the whole Mass of the Blood passes through the Lungs by the Pulmonary Artery and Vein The first that I could ever find who had a distinct Idea of this Matter was Michael Servetus a Spanish Physician who was burnt for Arianism at Geneva near 140 Years ago Well had it been for the Church of Christ if he had wholly confined himself to his own Profession His Sagacity in this Particular before so much in the dark gives us great Reason to believe that the World might then have had just Cause to have blessed his Memory In a Book of his intituled Christianismi Restitutio printed in the Year MDLIII he clearly asserts that the Blood passes through the Lungs from the Left to the Right Ventricle of the Heart and not through the Partition which divides the two Ventricles as was at that Time commonly believed How he introduces it or in which of the Six Discourses into which Servetus divides his Book it is to be found I know not having never seen the Book my self Mr. Charles Bernard a very learned and eminent Chirurgeon of London who did me the Favour to communicate this Passage to me set down at length in the Margin which was transcribed out of Servetus could inform me no further only that he had it from a learned Friend of his who had himself copied it from Servetus Realdus Columbus of Cremona was the next that said any thing of it in his Anatomy printed at Venice 1559. in Folio and at Paris in 1572. in Octavo and afterwards elsewhere There he asserts the same Circulation through the Lungs that Servetus had done before but says that no Man had ever taken notice of it before him or had written any Thing about it Which shews that he did not copy from Servetus unless one should say that he stole the Notion without mentioning Servetus's Name which is injurious since in these Matters the same Thing may be and very often is observed by several Persons who never acquainted each other with their Discoveries But Columbus is much more particular for he says That the Veins lodge the whole Mass of the Blood in the Vena Cava which carries it into the Heart whence it cannot return the same Way that it went from the Right Ventricle it is thrown into the Lungs by the Pulmonary Artery where the Valves are so placed as to hinder its Return that Way into the Heart and so it is thrown into the Left Ventricle and by the Aorta again when enliven'd by the Air diffused through the whole Body Some Years after appeared Andreas Caesalpinus who printed his Peripatetical Questions at Venice in Quarto in 1571. And afterwards with his Medical Questions at the same Place in 1593. He is rather more particular than Columbus especially in examining how Arteries and Veins joyn at their Extremities which he supposes to be by opening their Mouths into each other And he uses the Word Circulation in his Peripatetical Questions which had never been used in that Sence before He also takes notice that the Blood swells below the Ligature in veins and urges that in Confirmation of his Opinion At last Dr. William Harvey printed a Discourse on purpose upon this Subject at Francfort in 1628. This Notion had only been occasionally and slightly treated of by Columbus and Caesalpinus who themselves in all probability did not know the Consequence of what they asserted and therefore it was never applied to other Purposes either to shew the Uses of the other Viscera or to explain the Natures of Diseases Neither for any Thing that appears at this Day had they made any Numbers of Experiments which were necessary to explain their Doctrine and to clear it from Opposition All this Dr. Harvey undertook to do and with indefatigable Pains traced the visible Veins and Arteries throughout the Body in their whole Journey from and to the Heart so as to demonstrate even to the most incredulous not only that the Blood circulates through the Lungs and Heart but the very Manner how and the Time in which that great Work is performed When he had once proved that the Motion of the Blood was so rapid as we now find it is then he drew such Consequences from it as shewed that he throughly understood his Argument and would leave little at least as little as he could to future Industry to discover in that particular Part of Anatomy This gave him a just Title to the Honour of so noble a Discovery since what his Predecessors had said before him was not enough understood to form just Notions from their Words One may also observe how gradually this Discovery as all abstruse Truths of Humane Disquisition was explained to the World Hippocrates first talked of the Usual Motion of the Blood Plato said That the Heart was the Original of the Veins and of the Blood that was carried about every Member of the Body Aristotle also somewhere speaks of a Recurrent Motion of the Blood Still all this was only Opinion and Belief It
Harvey's Time Not one of these Discoveries has ever shown a single Instance of any Artery going to or of any Vein coming from the Heart Ligatures have been made of infinite Numbers of Vessels and the Course of all the Animal Juices in all manner of living Creatures has thereby been made visible to the naked Eye and yet not one of these has ever weakned Dr. Harvey's Doctrine The Pleasure of Destroying in Matters of this Kind is not much less than the Pleasure of Building And therefore when we see that those Books which have been written against some of the eminentest of these Discoveries though but a few Years ago comparatively speaking are so far dead that it is already become a Piece of Learning even to know their Titles we have sufficient Assurance that these Discoverers whose Writings out-live Opposition neither deceive themselves nor others So that whatsoever it might be formerly yet in this Age general Consent in Physiological Matters especially after a long Canvass of the Things consented to is an almost infallible Sign of Truth 3. The more Ways are made use of to arrive at any one particular Part of Knowledge the surer that Knowledge is when it appears that these different Methods lend Help each to other If Malpighius's or Leeuwenhoek's Glasses had made such Discoveries as Men's Reason could not have agreed to if Objects had appeared confused and disorderly in their Microscopes if their Observations had contradicted what the naked Eye reveals then their Verdict had been little worth But when the Discoveries made by the Knife and the Microscope disagree only as Twi-light and Noon-day then a Man is satisfied that the Knowledge which each affords to us differs only in Degree not in Sort. 4. It can signifie nothing in the present Controversie to pretend that Books are lost or to say that for ought we know Herophilus might anciently have made this Discovery or Erasistratus that their Reasonings demonstrate the Extent of their Knowledge as convincingly as if we had a Thousand old Systems of Ancient Anatomy extant 5. In judging of Modern Discoveries one is nicely to distinguish between Hypothesis and Theory The Anatomy of the Nerves holds good whether the Nerves carry a Nutritious Juice to the several Parts of the Body or no. The Pancreas sends a Juice into the Duodenum which mixes there with the Bile let the Nature of that Juice be what it will Yet here a nice Judge may observe that every Discovery has mended the Hypotheses of the Modern Anatomists and so it will always do till the Theories of every Part and every Juice be as entire as Experiments and Observations can make them As these Discoveries have made the Frame of our own Bodies a much more intelligible Thing than it was before though there is yet a great deal unknown so the same Discoveries having been applied to and found in almost all sorts of known Animals have made the Anatomy of Brutes Birds Fishes and Insects much more perfect than it could possibly be in former Ages Most of the Rules which Galen lays down in his Anatomical Administrations are concerning the Dissection of Apes If he had been now to write besides those tedious Advices how to part the Muscles from the Membranes and to observe their several Insertions and Originations the Jointings of the Bones and the like he would have taught the World how to make Ligatures of all sorts of Vessels in their proper Places what Liquors had been most convenient to make Injections with thereby to discern the Courses of Veins Arteries Chyle-Vessels or Lympheducts how to unravel the Testicles how to use Microscopes to the best Advantage He would have taught his Disciples when and where to look for such and such Vessels or Glands where Chymical Trials were useful and what the Processes were by which he made his Experiments or found out his Theories Which Things fill up every Page in the Writings of later Dissectors This he would have done as well as what he did had these Ways of making Anatomical Discoveries been then known and practised The World might then have expected such Anatomies of Brutes as Dr. Tyson has given of the Rattle-Snake or Dr. Moulin of the Elephant Such Dissections of Fishes as Dr. Tyson's of the Porpesse and Steno's of the Shark Such of Insects as Malpighius's of a Silk-Worm Swammerdam's of the Ephemeron Dr. Lister's of a Snail and the same Dr. Tyson's of Long and Round Body-Worms All which shew Skill and Industry not conceivable by a Man that is not a little versed in these Matters To this Anatomy of Bodies that have Sensitive Life we ought to add the Anatomy of Vegetables begun and brought to great Perfection in Italy and England at the same Time by Malpighius and Dr. Grew By their Glasses they have been able to give an Account of the different Textures of all the Parts of Trees Shrubs and Herbs to trace the several Vessels which carry Air Lympha Milk Rosin and Turpentine in those Plants which afford them to describe the whole Process of Vegetation from Seed to Seed and in a Word though they have left a great deal to be admired because it was to them incomprehensible yet they have discovered a great deal to be admired because of its being known by their Means CHAP. XX. Of Ancient and Modern Natural Histories of Elementary Bodies and Minerals HAving now finished my Comparison of Ancient and Modern Anatomy with as much Exactness as my little Insight into these Things would give me Leave I am sensible that most Men will think that I have been too tedious But besides that I had not any where found it carefully done to my Hands though it is probable that it has in Books which have escaped my Notice I thought that it would be a very effectual Instance how little the Ancients may have been presumed to have perfected any one Part of Natural Knowledge when their own Bodies which they carried about with them and which of any Thing they were the nearliest concerned to know were comparatively speaking so very imperfectly traced However in the remaining Parts of my Parallel I shall be much shorter which I hope may be some Amends for my too great Length in this From those Instruments or Mechanical Arts whether Ancient or Modern by which Knowledge has been advanced I am now to go to the Knowledge it self According to the Method already proposed I am to begin with Natural History in its usual Acceptation as it takes in the Knowledge of the several Kinds of Elementary Bodies Minerals Insects Plants Beasts Birds and Fishes The Usefulness and the Pleasure of this Part of Learning is too well known to need any Proof And besides it is a Study about which the greatest Men of all Ages have employed themselves Of the very few lost Books that are mentioned in the Old Testament one was an History of Plants written by the wisest of Men and he a King So that there is
of the greatest things which he has given us in his Philosophical and Mathematical Discourses For nothing does more convincingly put these things out of Doubt than to trace them up to their first Originals which can be done but in a very few But it is time to proceed CHAP. XXI Of Ancient and Modern Histories of Plants THE Natural History of Plants comes next which for Variety and Use is one of the noblest and pleasantest Parts of Knowledge It s Mechanical and Medicinal Advantages were early known Fruits afforded the first Sustenance to Mankind and the old Heathens esteemed those worthy of Consecration who taught them to till their Grounds gather their Seed and grind their Corn with Trees they built themselves Houses afterwards they found that the Bark of some Plants would serve for Cloaths and others afforded Medicines against Wounds and Diseases There is no doubt therefore but this Part of Knowledge was sufficiently cultivated for the Uses of humane Life especially when the World becoming Populous had communicated their Notions together and Conversation had introduced the Arts of Luxury and Plenty amongst Mankind But whether the Natural History of Plants was so exactly known formerly as it is at present is the Question The ancientest Writers of Plants now extant are Theophrastus Pliny and Dioscorides indeed the only ones who say any thing considerable to the present Purpose Theophrastus describes nothing gives abundance of Observations of several Plants and the like but what he says is too general for our Purpose Pliny and Dioscorides who lived long after him do give Descriptions indeed of a great many Plants but short imperfect and without Method they will tell you for Instance that a Plant is hairy has broad Leaves that its Stalks are knotty hollow or square that its Branches creep upon the Ground are erect and so forth in short if there is any thing remarkable in the Colour or Shape of the Stalk Root Seed Flower or Fruit which strikes the Eye at first Sight it may perhaps be taken Notice of but then every thing is confused and seldom above one or two Plants of a sort are mentioned though perhaps later Botanists have observed some Scores plainly reducible to the same general Head Pliny ranges many of the Plants which he describes in an Order something Alphabetical others he digests according to their Virtues others he puts together because they were discovered by great Persons and called by their Discoverers Names all which Methods how much soever they may assist the Memory in remembring hard Names or in retaining the Materia Medica in one View in a Man's Head signifie nothing to the Understanding the Characteristical Differences of the several Plants by which alone and not by accidental Agreements in Virtue Smell Colour Tast Place of Growth Time of sprouting or any mechanical Use to which they may be made serviceable Men may become exact Botanists Without such a Method to which the Ancients were altogether Strangers the Knowledge of Plants is a confused thing depending wholly upon an uncommon Strength of Memory and Imagination and even with the Help of the best Books scarce attainable without a Master Conradus Gesner to whose Labours the World has been unspeakably beholden in almost all Parts of Natural History was the first Man that I know of who hinted at the true Way to distinguish Plants and reduce them to fixed and certain Heads In a Letter to Theodorus Zuingerus he says that Plants are to be ranged according to the Shape of their Flowers Fruits and Seeds having observed that Cultivation or any accidental Difference of Soil never alters the Shape of these more Essential Parts but that every Plant has something there peculiar by which it may be distinguished not only from others of a remoter Genus but also from those of the same Family About the same Time Andreas Caesalpinus and Fabius Columna the first especially reduced that into an Art which Gesner had hinted at before yet what they writ lay neglected though Clusius Caspar Bauhinus Parkinson Gerard and Johnson and John Bauhinus had taken very laudable Pains in describing not only the more general Sorts taken notice of by the Ancients but also in observing their several Sub-divisions with great Niceness and Skill John Bauhinus also had described every particular Plant then known in his General History of Plants with great Accuracy and compared whatsoever had been said before and adjusted old Names to those Plants which Modern Herbarists had gathered with so much Care that the Philological Part of Botany seems by him to have in a manner received its utmost Perfection The great Work already begun by Caesalpinus and Columna was still imperfect which though perhaps not the most laborious was yet the most necessary to a Man that would consider those Things Philosophically and comprehend the whole Vegetable Kingdom as the Chymists call it under one View This was to digest every Species of Plants under such and such Families and Tribes that so by the help of a general Method taken only from the Plants themselves and not from any accidental Respects under which they may be considered once thoroughly understood a Learner might not be at a Loss upon the Sight of every new Plant that he meets with but might discern its General Head at first View and then by running over the Tables thereunto belonging might at last either come to the particular Species which he sought for or which would do as well find that the Plant before him was hitherto undescribed and that by it there would be a new accession made to the old Stock Mr. Ray drew a rough Draught of this Matter in the Tables of Plants inserted into Bishop Wilkins's Book of a Real Character and Philosophical Language and was soon followed by Dr. Morison in his Hortus Regius Blesensis who pursuant to his own Method begun a General History of Plants which he not living to finish Mr. Ray undertook the whole Work anew and very happily compleated it This great Performance of his which will be a standing Monument of Modern Industry and Exactness deserves to be more particularly described First therefore He gives an Anatomical Account from Malpighius and Grew of Plants in general And because the Ancients had said nothing upon that Subject of which for want of Microscopes they could only have a very obscure Notion all that he says upon that Head is Modern Afterwards when he comes to particular Plants he draws up Tables to which he reduces the whole Vegetable Kingdom except a very few irregular Plants which stand by themselves These Tables are taken from the Shape of the Flowers Seeds Seed-vessels Stalks and Leaves from the Number or Order of these when determined and Irregularity when undetermined from the Want or having of particular Juices Lympha's Milks Oils Rosins or the like In short from Differences or Agreements wholly arising from the Plants themselves His Descriptions are exacter than John