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
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
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
ever suffer the Egyptian Priests to reveal such a Secret to that conquered People Dioclesian according to them burnt all the Chymical Books that he could find in Egypt that the Egyptians might not rebel when they were deprived of that Fund which supported their Wars And Borrichius supposes that the Egyptian Priests used this Art chiefly to supply the Expences of their Kings 2. How came Jason and the Argonauts not to grow richer by this Fleece It cannot be pretended that it was concealed from them because it was like the Books of the Modern Adepti written in so obscure a Stile that it was unintelligible for want of a Master since Medea was with Jason who had the Secret what or how great soever it was 3. Since the Grecians were not tied to Secrecy how came their Traditions to be so obscure that those Passages in Apollonius Rhodius's Argonauticks which are supposed to be meant of the Grand Elixir were never applied to a Chymical Sense till the Writings of Synesius Zosimus and the other old Grecian Chymists appeared Especially since 4. Apollonius Rhodius himself was an Alexandrian Greek born in Egypt and so could easily acquaint himself with the Traditions of that Country which he originally of another Nation was under no Obligation to conceal 2. The Chymists at least Borrichius for them own Democritus's Books to be genuine upon the Credit of Zosimus who quotes them If they are this pretended Secrecy falls to the Ground For Democritus affirms That he learnt his Art from Ostanes a Mede who was sent by the Kings of Persia into Egypt as Governour of the Egyptian Priests Then the Secret was divulged to some of the Conquerours of their Country If so why no more Tradition of it If not the Process it self yet at least the Memory that once there was such a Process Which would have been enough for this Purpose The same Question may be asked of Democritus to whom Ostanes revealed it This will weaken Zosimus's Credit as an Antiquary upon whose Assertion most of this pretended Antiquity is founded Since at the same Time that he objects the Secrecy of the ancient Egyptian Priests as a Reason why the Memory of this Art was so little known he owns himself obliged to a Greek who had it from the Egyptians at Second Hand But how will these Pretenders to remote Antiquity who tell us that Moses by his Skill in Chymistry ground the Golden Calf to Powder reconcile a Passage in Theophrastus to their Pretensions He speaking of Quicksilver says that the Art of extracting it from Cinnabar was not known till 90 Years before his Time when it was first found out by Callias an Athenian Can we think that the Egyptians could hinder these inquisitive Grecians who staid so long in their Country from knowing that there was such a Metal as Mercury Or could these Egyptians make Gold without it If they could they might reasonably suppose that the Israelites could make Brick without Straw since they could make Gold and Silver without that which Modern Adepti affirm to be the Seed of all Metals Theophrastus's Words are too general to admit of an Objection as if he believed that Callias's Invention ought to be limited to his own Country This join'd to the great Silence of the Ancients especially Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus who dwell so long upon the Egyptian Arts and Learning concerning most of the wonderful Phaenomena of that extravagant Metal plainly shews that there were no Traditions of such mighty things to be done by it as the Alchemist's Books are full of Borrichius therefore recurrs to his old Subterfuge Egyptian Secrecy and finds some doubtful at least if not fabulous Stories of Daedalus and Icarus and the Poetical Age which he opposes to the positive Testimony of Theophrastus Perhaps this may be thought to be begging the Question since some who have written of the Philosophers Stone have taught that their Mercury has no Affinity with common Mercury Which has led many Persons to try several extravagant Processes to find it out But Eirenaeus Philalethes who is look'd upon as one of the clearest Writers that has ever written upon this Subject says expressly that Natural Mercury Philosophically prepared is the Philosophical Menstruum and the dissolvent Mercury After so long an Enquiry into the Antiquity of this Art of transmuting Metals it will be asked perhaps what may be thought of the Art it self I must needs say I cannot tell what Judgment to make of it The Pretences to Inspiration and that Enthusiastick Cant which run through the Writings of almost all the Alchemists seem so like Imposture that one would be tempted to think that it was only a Design carried on from Age to Age to delude Mankind and it is not easy to imagine why God should hear the Prayers of those that desire to be rich If as they pretend it was Zeal for the good of Mankind that made them take such Pains to find out such noble Medicines as should free Men from the most obstinate Diseases to which our Natures are subject why do they not communicate them and leave the Process in Writing plainly to Posterity if they are afraid of Danger for themselves Concern for the Welfare of Mankind and affected Secrecy seem here inconsistent things Men of such mortified Tempers and publick Spirits ought not to be concerned though Gold or Silver were made as common as Lead or Tin provided that the Elixir which should remove all Diseases were once known Though these are reasonable Prejudices against the Belief of the Truth of this Operation yet one can hardly tell how to contradict a Tradition so general and so very well attested So many Men methinks could not have cheated the World successfully so long if some had not been sincere And to use a Proverb in their own Way so much Smoak could scarce have lasted so long without some Fire Till the seminal Principles from which Metals are compounded are perfectly known the Possibility of the Operation cannot be disproved Which Principles as all other real Essences of things are concealed from us But as a wise Man cannot perhaps without Rashness disbelieve what is so confidently asserted so he ought not to spend much Time and Cost about trying whether it will succeed till some of the Adepti shall be so kind as to give him the Receipt By what has been said it is evident what Opinion one ought to have of the Chymical Skill of the ancient Egyptians Though it is most probable that the Art owes its Original to them from whom it receives its Name But this Original is much too late to do Sir William Temple's Hypothesis any Service But it is high Time to leave the Egyptian Physick and therefore I shall only add One or Two Instances of their Skill in Anatomy and so pass on Gellius and Macrobius observe the one from Appion who wrote of the Egyptians the other from the Egyptian Priests
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
little further regarded than as they are proper to instruct young Beginners who must have a general Notion of the whole Work before they can sufficiently comprehend any particular Part of it and who must be taught to reason by the Solutions of other Men before they can be able to give Rational Solutions of their own In which Case a false Hypothesis ingeniously contrived may now and then do as much Service as a true one 3. Mathematicks are joyned along with Physiology not only as Helps to Men's Understandings and Quickners of their Parts but as absolutely necessary to the comprehending of the Oeconomy of Nature in all her Works 4. The new Philosophers as they are commonly called avoid making general Conclusions till they have collected a great Number of Experiments or Observations upon the Thing in hand and as new Light comes in the old Hypotheses fall without any Noise or Stir So that the Inferences that are made from any Enquiries into Natural Things though perhaps set down in general Terms yet are as it were by Consent received with this Tacit Reserve As far as the Experiments or Observations already made will warrant How much these Four Things will enlarge Natural Philosophy is easie to guess I do not say that none of these things were anciently done but only that they were not then so general The Corpuscular Philosophy is in all Probability the oldest and its Principles are those intelligible ones I just now commended But its Foundations being very large and requiring much Time Cost and Patience to build any great Matters upon it soon fell before it seems to have been throughly understood For it seems evident That Epicurus minded nothing but the raising of a Sect which might talk as plausibly as those of Aristotle or Plato since he despised all Manner of Learning even Mathematicks themselves and gloried in this that he spun all his Thoughts out of his own Brain a good Argument of his Wit indeed but a very ordinary one of that Skill in Nature which Lucretius extols in him every time that he takes Occasion to speak of him The whole Ancient Philosophy looks like a thing of Ostentation and Pomp otherwise I cannot understand why Plato should reprove Eudoxus and Archytas for trying to make their Skill in Geometry useful in Matters of civil Life by inventing of Instruments of publick Advantage or think that those sublime Truths were debased when the unlearned part of Mankind have been the better for them And therefore as Plutarch complains in his Life of Marcellus Mechanical Arts were despised by Geometers till Archimedes's Time Now though this be particularly spoken there by Plutarch of the making of Instruments of Defence and Offence in War yet it is also applicable to all the Ancient Philosophy and Mathematicks in general The old Philosophers seemed still to be afraid that the common People should despise their Arts if commonly understood this made them keep for the most Part to those Studies which required few Hands and Mechanical Tools to compleat them Which to any Man that has a right Notion of the Extent of a natural Philosopher's Work will appear absolutely necessary Above all the Ancients did not seem sufficiently to understand the Connection between Mathematical Proportions of Lines and Solids in an abstracted Proposition and in every Part of the Creation at least in their reasonings about the Causes of Natural Things they did not take any great pains to shew it When Galen was to give an Account of Vision in his Books De Usu Partium because he had Occasion to use some few Geometrical Terms as Cone Axis Triangle and the like he makes a long Excuse and tells a tedious Story of a Daemon that appeared to him and commanded him to write what he did and all this least the Physicians of that Age should think that he conjured and so take a Prejudice against all that he said This shews that in Galen's Time at least there was little Correspondence between Mathematical and Physical Sciences and that Mankind did not believe that there was so intimate a Relation between them as it is now generally known there is Many a Man that cannot demonstrate any one single Proposition in Euclid takes it now for granted that Geometry is of infinite Use to a Philosopher and it is believed now upon trust because it is become an Axiom amongst the Learned in these Matters And if it had been so received in Galen's Time or by those more ancient Authors whom Galen's Contemporaries followed or pretended at least to follow as their Patterns such as Hippocrates whom all sides reverenced Herophilus Erasistratus Asclepiades and several more there would have been no need of any Excuses for what he was doing since his Readers being accustomed to such sort of Reasonings would either readily have understood them or acquiesced in them as legitimate Ways of Proof If Three or Four Mathematical Terms were so affrighting how would those learned Discourses of Steno and Croone concerning muscular Motion have moved them How much would they have been amazed at such minute Calculations of the Motive-strength of all sorts of Muscles in the several general sorts of Animals as require very great Skill in Geometry even to understand them which are made by Borellus in his Discourses of the Motion of Animals It is not enough in this Case to quote a Saying or Two out of some great Man amongst the Ancients or to tell us that Plato said long ago That God geometrizes in all his Works as long as no Man can produce any one Ancient Essay upon any one Part of Physiology where Mathematical Ratiocinations were introduced to salve those Phaenomena of Natural Things upon which it was possible to talk plausibly without their Help At least it is certain That they contented themselves with general Theories without entring into minute Disquisitions into the several varieties of Things as is evident in the Two Cases already alledged of Vision and Muscular Motion Now as this Method of Philosophizing laid down above is right so it is easie to prove that it has been carefully followed by Modern Philosophers My Lord Bacon was the first great Man who took much pains to convince the World that they had hitherto been in a wrong Path and that Nature her self rather than her Secretaries was to be addressed to by those who were desirous to know very much of her Mind Monsieur Des Cartes who came soon after did not perfectly tread in his Steps since he was for doing most of his Work in his Closet concluding too soon before he had made Experiments enough but then to a vast Genius he joined exquisite Skill in Geometry and working upon intelligible Principles in an intelligible Manner though he very often failed of one Part of his End namely a right Explication of the Phaenomena of Nature yet by marrying Geometry and Physicks together he put the World in Hopes of a Masculine Off-spring in process of Time
though the first Productions should prove abortive This was the State of Natural Philosophy when those great Men who after King Charles II's Restoration joined in a Body called by that Prince himself the ROYAL SOCIETY went on with the Design they made it their Business to set their Members a work to collect a perfect History of Nature in order to establish thereupon a Body of Physicks what has been done towards it by the Members of that illustrious Body will be evident by considering that Boyle Barrow Newton Huygens Malpighius Leeuwenhoek Willoughby Willis and Abundance more already named amongst the great Advancers of real Learning have belonged to it If it shall be thought too tedious a Work to examine all their Writings Mr. Boyle's Works any one good System of the Cartesian Philosophy Monsieur Rohault's for Instance or to comprehend all under one a Book Intituled Philosophia Vetus Nova ad Usum Scholae accommodata may be consulted and then it will be evident enough of which Side the Verdict ought to be given in the last Book especially it is evident how very little the Ancients did in all Parts of Natural Philosophy and what a great Compass it at present takes since it makes the Comparison I all along appeal to Thus it seems to me to be very evident That the Ancients Knowledge in all Matters relating to Mathematicks and Physicks was incomparably inferiour to that of the Moderns These are Subjects many of them at least which require great Intenseness of Thought great Strength and Clearness of Imagination even only to understand them how much more then to invent them The Ancient Orators who spoke so great things in Praise of Eloquence who make it so very hard a thing to be an Orator had little or no Notion of the Difficulty of these Sciences the Romans especially who despised what they did not understand and who did not without some Indignation learn of a People whom themselves had conquered But if they could have conceived what a Force of Genius is required to invent such Propositions as are to be found in the Writings of their own Mathematicians and of the Modern Geometers and Philosophers they would soon have acknowledged that there was need of as great at least if not greater Strength of Parts and Application to do very considerable things in these Sciences as in their own admired Eloquence which was never more artfully employed than in commending it self The Panegyricks which they made upon Geometry were rather Marks of their Pedantry than of their Skill Plato and Pythagoras admired them and therefore they did so too out of a blind Reverence to those great Names Otherwise amongst those numerous Commendations which are given to Archimedes some would have been spent upon the many noble Theorems which he discovered and not almost all upon the Engines wherewith he baffled Marcellus at the Siege of Syracuse The Proposition That the Superficies of a Sphere is equal to the Area's of Four of its greatest Circles which is one of the most wonderful Inventions that was ever found in Geometry shews him to have been a much greater Man than all that is said of him by the Roman or Greek Historians Had experimental Philosophy been anciently brought upon the Stage had Geometry been solemnly and generally applied to the Mechanism of Nature and not solely made use of to instruct Men in the Art of Reasoning and even that too not very generally neither the Moderns would not have had so great Reason to boast as now they have For these are things which come under ocular Demonstration which do not depend upon the Fancies of Men for their Approbation as Oratory and Poetry very often do So that one may not only in general say that the Ancients are out-done by the Moderns in these Matters but also assign most of the particulars and determine the Proportion wherein and how far they have been exceeded and shew the several Steps whereby this sort of Learning has from Age to Age received Improvement which ends Disputes and satisfies the Understanding at once CHAP. XXVII Of the Philological Learning of the Moderns HItherto in the main I please my self that there cannot be much said against what I have asserted though I have all along taken Care not to speak too positively where I found that it was not an easie Thing to vindicate every Proposition without entring into a Controversy which would bear plausible things on both sides and so might be run out into a Multitude of Words which in Matters of this kind are very tiresome But there are other Parts of Learning still behind where the very offering to compare the Moderns to the Ancients may seem a Paradox where the subject Matter is entirely ancient and is chiefly if not altogether contained in Books that were written before the Ancient Learning suffered much Decay Under this Head Philology and Divinity may very properly be ranked I place Divinity last to avoid Repetition because what I have to say concerning Modern Philology will strengthen many things that may be urged in the Behalf of Modern Divinity as opposed to the Ancient In speaking of the Extent and Excellency of the Philological Learning of the Moderns within these last 200 Years I would not be mis-understood For the Question is not whether any Modern Critick has understood Plato or Aristotle Homer or Pindar as well as they did themselves for that were ridiculous but whether Modern Industry may not have been able to discover a great many Mistakes in the Assertions of the Ancients about Matters not done in their own Times but several Ages before they were born For the Ancients did not live all in one Age and though they appear all under one Denomination and so as it were upon a Level like things seen at a vast Distance to us who are very remote from the youngest of them yet upon a nearer View they will be found very remote each from the other and so as liable to Mistakes when they talk of Matters not transacted in their own Times as we are when reason of Matters of Fact which were acted in the Reign of William the Conquerour Wherefore if one reflects upon the Alteration which Printing has introduced into the State of Learning when every Book once printed becomes out of Danger of being lost or hurt by Copiers and that Books may be compared examined and canvassed with much more Ease than they could before it will not seem ridiculous to say That Joseph Scaliger Isaac Casaubon Salmasius Henricus Valesius Selden Usher Bochart and other Philologers of their Stamp may have had a very comprehensive View of Antiquity such a one as Strangers to those Matters can have no Idea of nay a much greater than taken altogether any one of the Ancients themselves ever had or indeed could have Demosthenes and Aristophanes knew the State of their own Times better than Casaubon or Salmasius But it is a Question whether Boëthius or
often as much above the Author upon whom he tries his Skill as he that discerns another Man's Thoughts is therein greater than he that thinks And the Objection that is commonly made against Editors of old Books That every Man cries up his own Author beyond all that have ever wrote upon that Subject or in that Way will rarely hold of truly great Criticks when they pass their Judgments and employ their Thoughts upon indifferent Books since some have taken as much Pains in their Critical Annotations to expose Authors who have had the good Luck to be exceedingly commended by learned Men as ever others did to praise them Soon after Learning was restored when Copies of Books by Printing were pretty well multiplied Criticism began which first was exercised in Setting out Correct Editions of Ancient Books Men being forced to try to mend the Copies of Books which they saw were so very negligently written It soon became the Fashionable Learning and after Erasmus Budaeus Beatus Rhenanus and Turnebus had dispersed that sort of Knowledge through England France Germany and the Low-Countries which before had been kept altogether amongst the Italians it was for about One Hundred and Twenty Years cultivated with very great Care And if since it has been at a Stand it has not been because the Parts of Men are sunk but because the Subject is in a manner exhausted or at least so far drained that it requires more Labour and a greater Force of Genius now to gather good Gleanings than formerly to bring home a plentiful Harvest and yet this Age has produced Men who in the last might have been reckoned with the Scaligers and the Lipsius's It is not very long since Holstenius Bochart and Gerhard Vossius died but if they will not be allowed to have been of our Age yet Isaac Vossius Nicholas Heinsius Frederick Gronovius Ezekiel Spanheym and Graevius may come in the two last of them are still alive and the others died but a few Years since England perhaps cannot shew a proportionable Stock of Criticks of this Stamp In Henry VIII's Time there was an admirable Set of Philologers in the Nation though there is great difference to be made between a good Critick and a Man that writes Latin as easily and correctly as his Mother-Tongue Sir Thomas More Cardinal Poole Linacre Collet Cheek Ascham and several more often to be met with in Erasmus's Epistles wrote Latin with a Purity that no Italian needed then to have been ashamed of Let the Subject they wrote have been what it would one may see by the Purity of their Stile that they wrote in a Language which expressed their Thoughts without Constraint A great Familiarity with the politest Authors of Antiquity was what these Men valued themselves much upon and it was then the Delight of the Nation as much as their Disputes in Religion would give them Leave Though this seemed to sink by degrees yet that afterwards Critical Skill in Antiquity was valued and pursued by our learned Men will not be questioned by those who consider that Sir Henry Savile Mr. Cambden Archbishop Usher Mr. Selden Sir John Marsham Mr. Gataker not to mention some now alive whose Fame will one Day equal that of the Scaligers and the Grotius's of other Nations were the Glories of our Country as well as of the Age they lived in In short to conclude this Argument Though Philological and Critical Learning has been generally accused of Pedantry because it has sometimes been pursued by Men who seemed to value themselves upon Abundance of Quotations of Greek and Latin and a vain Ostentation of diffused Reading without any Thing else in their Writings to recommend them yet the Difficulty that there is to do any Thing considerable in it joyned with the great Advantages which thereby have accrued to the Commonwealth of Learning have made this no mean Head whereon to commend the great Sagacity as well as Industry of these later Ages CHAP. XXVIII Of the Theological Learning of the Moderns TO Philology I before added Divinity and as I hope to prove not without Reason As they relate to our Question they both agree in this that the Subject of them both is truly Ancient and that it is impossible to become very excellent in either of them without a familiar Conversation with those Original Books to which the great Masters of both these Sciences do constantly appeal Our Blessed Saviour did not reveal his Law by Halves to his Apostles nor is the New Testament an imperfect Rule of Faith The Old Testament likewise has constantly been at hand and the Jews have ever since their Return from the Babylonish Captivity been scrupulously sollicitous to preserve the Genuine Hebrew and Chaldee Text of the Old Testament pure and uncorrupted to succeeding Ages Yet though these together with the Writings of the Greek and Latin Fathers be Instruments without which no Divine can work and though it seems almost impossible that any Man should be able to perform all the Duties of his Profession that are incumbent upon him as a Scholar without a competent Exactness in all these Things yet it is very possible that Modern Divines who make use of these Instruments may be better Work-men than those Ancient Fathers who furnished them with the greatest part Now that there may be no Disputes about Terms mis-understood it will be necessary to explain what is here meant by a perfect Divine that is to say such an one as may be a Standard whereon to found a Comparison A perfect Divine ought to understand the Text of the Old and New Testament so exactly as to have a clear Notion of every Book in general and of the Grammatical Meaning of every Text in particular that so he may be able to reconcile all Difficulties and answer all Objections that may arise He ought to understand the State of the Church as to its Doctrine and Discipline in its several Ages He ought to be thoroughly versed in all the General Notions of Ethicks taken in their utmost Extent to enable him to resolve such Cases of Conscience as may occurr with Judgment and Satisfaction he ought to be a Master of all the Topicks of Perswasion which can ever lie in his Way that so his Exhortations may please and convince those whom he designs to perswade at the same Time last of all he ought to be able to answer all the Objections which may be or have been raised against the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church by its open or secret Enemies These seem to be the necessary Qualifications of a Perfect Divine it may perhaps be questioned whether any Man did ever fully come up to this Description neither is it necessary that any should since the Question will be as perfectly answered by determining who have come the nearest to it as by assigning any particular Person that ever quite reach'd up to it For these Differences do not lie in a Mathematical Point and
It is not because they are hard to be understood for an indifferent Skill in Greek and Latin is sufficient to go through with the greatest part of them But Want of Method great Multiplicity of Words and frequent Repetitions tire out most Readers They know not how far they are got but by the Number of the Leaves and so having no Rest for their Minds to lean upon when once they begin to be weary they are soon disgusted If therefore these Inconveniences are in a great Measure avoided by Modern Preachers their Sermons are in their Kind more perfect though the Matter which both of them work upon be the same And if these Things be the Effects of great Study and of an exact Judgment at least in those who contributed the most to so great an Alteration then this also may come in as a proper Evidence of the Increase of Modern Learning and with much more Reason than those Things which only tend to divert a Man when he is unfit for serious Business Who those are who have succeeded the Hookers the Chillingworths the Sandersons and the Hammonds of this last Age to such excellent purpose for the present and those that shall come after I need not name but shall rather conclude with that Saying in Velleius Paterculus upon a not much unlike Occasion Vivorum ut admiratio magna ita censura difficilis est The last Thing which I mentioned as necessary for a Divine is To be able to answer such Objections as have been or may be raised against the Christian Faith Of the Controversies which have arisen among Christians and the Adversaries with whom they have been obliged to engage there are in the present Account two Sorts those which the Ancient Fathers were concerned with and those that appeared since Of the Latter it may possibly seem hard to pass a Judgment since one cannot well say how Men would have managed Disputes which never came in their Way The former may also be sub-divided into those which have been renewed in our own Time and those of which we have only the Memory in Ancient Books So that one is rather to consider how Controversies were handled in general and so inferr how these Modern ones would have been managed had there been an Occasion which have only engaged the Wits and Passions of later Ages It is evident that in their first Dispures with the Gentiles the old Apologists did with great Accuracy expose both the Follies of their Worship and the Vanity of their Philosophy They opened the Christian Religion with great Clearness they showed the Grounds of their Belief and proved its Reasonableness upon such Principles as were both solid in themselves and suitable to the Ways of Arguing and the peculiar Notions of all their several Adversaries Afterwards when the Mysteries of the Christian Religion were so eagerly debated in Ages wherein they feared no Foreign Force they shewed as great Subtilty in their Arguments and as great Dexterity in shifting off the Sophisms of their Opponents as have ever been shewed in later Times So that thus far the Moderns seem to have little Advantage And indeed the Books that were written in Defence of the Christian Religion were very admirable But in the Controversies that were managed amongst themselves there seem to be many Times as visible Signs of too great a Subtilty as of a judicious Understanding of the Point in hand They used little Method in ranging their Arguments and rarely stated the Question in plain and short Terms which made them often multiply Words to a tedious Length that both tired the Readers and darkned the Dispute That all these Faults are too often found in the Polemical Discourses of the Moderns is most certain But Comparisons are always laid between the ablest Men of both Sides The Modern Defences of the Doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation may be compared with the old Defences of the same Doctrines against the Arians and other Ancient Hereticks If Hereticks may be compared with Hereticks there is no Question but the Socinians are much abler Disputants than the Arians and Eunomians of old They have collected every Thing that could look like an Argument they have critically canvassed every Text of Scripture which anciently was not so Grammatically understood as now it is and have spared no Pains nor Art to wrest every Thing that with any Shew of Reason could be drawn to their Side They have refined upon the Philosophical Notions of God and of his Attributes and have taken great Care not to confound their Readers or themselves with Want of Method or a Multiplicity of Words Such able Adversaries have not failed of as able Opponents And when Men of Skill manage any Dispute whatsoever it be they will teach one another the Art of Reasoning even though before-hand they should not well have understood it when their Debates continue to any Length Whence also it has followed that though these Great Men who have defended our Faith against such subtile Adversaries would have shewn their Skill equally upon any other Subject which they should have undertook yet upon these Questions the Truth would otherwise have never been so perfectly known And here it ought to be observed that the Art of making Controversies easie and intelligible even though the Arguments should be all the same that had formerly been urged shews much greater Skill and a more thorough Understanding of those Matters than had been discovered before For he that makes another understand a Thing in few Words has a more clear and comprehensive Knowledge of that Thing than another Man who uses a great many Such a Man's Excursions if he has a Mind at any Time to go out of the Way or to enlarge for the Ease of those who love to have Things expressed in an Homilitical Manner will never tire because having his Point still in view he will take Care that his Readers or Auditors shall always know where he is Hence it is that there are many Sermons in our Language upon the most abstruse Questions in the Christian Religion wherein English Readers who never read Fathers nor School-men whose Heads have never been filled with Terms of Art and Distinctions many Times without a Difference may both in few and clear Propositions know what they are to believe and at the same Time know how to defend it Hereby in all our Controversies with Papists Socinians and Dissenters many admirable Discourses have been written wherein one sees the Question rightly stated presently brought to an Head and accurately proved by such Arguments as its particular Nature may require It cannot be denied but a good deal of this Methodical Exactness was at first owing to the School-men but they are Moderns here And if their Writings have some Excellencies which the elegant Composures of more learned Ages want this also affords us a convincing Argument that Mankind will in something or other be always improving and that Men of working Heads what
scanned and more accurately understood and explained than otherwise it would ever have been and I suppose this will be readily owned to be one of the most excellent Parts of Knowledge 2. It is a Question whether very many of the greatest Promoters of any Part of this Theological Knowledge would or could have done so great things upon any other Subject Opposition in general whets Mens Parts extremely and that inward Satisfaction which a good Man takes in thinking that he is employed upon Arguments of greatest Concern to the Souls of Men inspires him with an Ardour that adds Wings to his native Alacrity and makes him in all such Cases even out-do himself 3. When different Parties are once formed and great Numbers of Youths are constantly trained up to succeed the older Champions of their respective Sides as they shall drop off all of them will not apply their Minds to Studies immediately relating to their own Professions but here and there one as his Genius shall lead him will try to excel in different Ways for the Glory of his own Party especially if he sees any of his Adversaries eminently famous before him in those things Thus Petavius set himself to contradict Joseph Scaliger's Books De Emendatione Temporum and Scioppius fell upon his other Critical Writings Whilst Isaac Casaubon concerned himself only with publishing and Commenting upon Athenaeus Polybius and Theophrastus He was complemented by all Sides but when once he wrote against the Annals of Cardinal Baronius he met with numerous Adversaries and there was scarce a Critick of the Church of Rome that wrote for some Time afterwards that did not peck at something or other in his other Writings This Emulation eminently appeared in the Order of the Jesuits the main Design of whose Institution seems to have been to engross all Learning as well as all Politicks to themselves and therefore we see so many extraordinary Men amongst them for all sorts of things thereby to give the World Occasion to think that there must certainly be something more than ordinary in the Constitution of a Body which every Day produced such excellent Persons So that if one considers how far this Emulation went which even yet is not wholly extinct it is hard to say whether Disputes in Religion have not rather helped to encrease the Stock of Learning than otherwise at least one may venture to say that they have not diminished it It is most certain that the different Political Interests in Europe have done it a mighty Kindness During the Establishment of the Roman Empire one common Interest guided that vast Body and these Western Kingdoms amongst the rest Rome was the Center of their Learning of the West as well as of their Hopes and thither the Provinces of this Part of the World had always Resort Whereas now every Kingdom standing upon its own Bottom they are all mutually jealous of each others Glory and in nothing more than in Matters of Learning in those Countries where they have Opportunities to pursue it About an Hundred and Fifty or Two Hundred Years since it was esteemed a very honourable Thing to write a true Ciceronian Style This the Italians pretended to keep to themselves and they would scarce allow that any Man beyond the Alpes unless perhaps Longolius and Cardinal Pole wrote pure Roman Latin This made other Nations strive to equal them and one rarely meets with a Book written at that Time upon a Subject that would bear the Elegancies of Stile in bad Latin When Critical Learning was in Fashion every Nation had some few great Men at the same Time or very near it to set against those of another Italy boasted of Robertus Titius and Petrus Victorius France had Joseph Scaliger Isaac Casaubon Cujacius Pithaeus Brissonius and several more Switzerland produced Gesner for that and almost every thing else Germany had Leopardus Gruter Putschius and others the Low Countries had Justus Lipsius England had Sir Henry Savile every Country had some great Men to keep up its Glory in those things which then were in greatest request In this last Age Mathematical and Physical Sciences seem to have been the Darling Studies of the Learned Men of Europe there also the same Emulation has been equally visible When Great Britain could shew such Men as my Lord Bacon my Lord Napier the Inventor of Logarithms Mr. Harriot Mr. Oughtred and Mr. Horrox Holland had Stevinus who first found out Decimal Arithmetick and Snellius France could reckon up Des Cartes Mersennus Fermat and Gassendi Italy had Galileo Torricellius and Cavallerius Germany Kepler and Denmark not long before Tycho Brahe When afterwards the Philosophers of England grew numerous and united their Strength France also took the Hint and its King set up a Royal Society to Rival ours The Duke of Tuscany had set up already at Florence the Academy del Cimento whose Members employed themselves in pursuing the same Methods In Germany an Academy of the same Nature has been raised Even Ireland has had its Philosophical Society From all which such Swarms of Great Men in every Part of Natural and Mathematical Knowledge have within these few Years appeared that it may perhaps without Vanity be believed that if this Humour lasts much longer and learned Men do not divert their Thoughts to Speculations of another Kind the next Age will not find very much Work of this Kind to do For this sort of Learning has spread where-ever Letters have had any Encouragement in Europe so successfully that even the Northern Kingdoms have had their Bartholin's their Borrichius's their Rudbeck's their Wormius's and their Hevelius's who have put in for that Prize which the Inhabitants of warmer Climates seemed already in possession of This has occasioned the Writing of Abundance of Books to vindicate the Glory of every great Invention to some eminent Man of that Country that the Authors of those Books belonged to Which Disputes though many Times very pedantically managed and with an Heat mis-becoming Learned Men yet has had this good Effect that while some were zealous to secure the Glory of the Invention of Things already discovered to their own Countries others were equally sollicitous to add a more undisputed Honour to them by new Inventions which they were sure no Man could possibly challenge Another Reason of the Decay of Learning according to Sir William Temple is the Want of Protection from Great Men and an unsatiable Thirst after Gain now grown the Humour of the Age. That Princes do not now delight to talk of Matters of Learning in their publick Conversations as they did about an Hundred and Fifty Years ago is very evident When Learning first came up Men fansied that every Thing could be done by it and they were charmed with the Eloquence of its Professors who did not fail to set forth all its Advantages in the most engaging Dress It was so very modish that the fair Sex seemed to believe that Greek and Latin added to
them with the greatest Accuracy The Masters of Writing in all these several Ways to this Day appeal to the Ancients as their Guides and still fetch Rules from them for the Art of Writing Homer and Aristotle and Virgil and Horace and Ovid and Terence are now studied as Teachers not barely out of Curiosity by Modern Poets So likewise are Demosthenes Aristotle Tully Quinctilian and Longinus by those who would write finely in Prose So that there is Reason to think that in these Arts the Ancients may have out-done the Moderns though neither have they been neglected in these later Ages in which we have seen extraordinary Productions which the Ancients themselves had they been alive would not have been ashamed of If this be so as I verily believe it is sure now it will be objected It is evident that the Ancients had a greater Force of Genius than the Moderns can pretend to Will it be urged that here also they had an Advantage by being born first Have these Arts a fixed Foundation in Nature or were they not attained to by Study If by Nature why have we heard of no Orators among the Inhabitants of the Bay of Soldania or eminent Poets in Peru If by Study why not now as well as formerly since Printing has made Learning cheap and easie Does it seem harder to speak and write like Cicero or Virgil than to find out the motions of the Heavens and to calculate the Distances of the Stars What can be the Reason of this Disparity The Reasons are several and scarce one of them of such a Nature as can now be helped and yet not conclusive against the Comparative Strength of Understanding evidently discernible in the Productions of the Learned Men of the present and immediately foregoing Ages to which I would be understood strictly to confine my Notion of the Word Modern These Reasons I shall examine at large because if they are valid they quite take away the Force of Sir William Temple's Hypothesis and by removing the blind Admiration now paid to the Ancient Orators and Poets set it upon such a Foot as will render the Reading of their Books more useful because less superstitious They are of several Sorts some relating to Oratory some to Poesie and some in common to both I shall first speak of those which relate more particularly to Poetry because it was much the ancientest Way of Writing in Greece where their Orators owned that they learned a great deal of what they knew even in their own as well as in other Parts of Learning from their Poets And here one may observe that no Poetry can be Charming that has not a Language to support it The Greek Tongue has a vast variety of long Words wherein long and short Syllables are agreeably intermixed together with great Numbers of Vowels and Diphthongs in the Middle-Syllables and those very seldom clogged by the joyning of harsh-sounding Consonants in the same Syllable All which Things give it a vast Advantage above any other Language that has ever yet been cultivated by Learned Men. By this Means all manner of Tunable Numbers may be formed in it with Ease as still appears in the remaining Dramatick and Lyrick Composures of the Greek Poets This seems to have been at first a lucky Accident since it is as visible in Homer who lived before the Grammarians had determined the Analogy of that Language by Rules which Rules were in a very great measure taken from his Poems as the Standard as in those Poets that came after him And that this peculiar Smoothness of the Greek Language was at first Accidental farther appears because the Phoenician or Hebrew Tongue from whence it was formed as most Learned Men agree is a rough unpolished Tongue abounding with short Words and harsh Consonants So that if one allows for some very small Agreement in the Numbers of Nouns and Variations of Tenses in Verbs the two Languages are wholly of a different Make. That a derived Language should be sweeter than its Mother-Tongue will seem strange to none that compares the Modern Tuscan with the Ancient Latin where though their Affinity is visible at first Sight in every Sentence yet one sees that that derived Language actually has a Sweetness and Tunableness in its Composition that could not be derived from its Parent since nothing can impart that to another which it has not it self And it shows likewise that a Barbarous People as the Italians were when mingled with the Goths and Lombards may without knowing or minding Grammatical Analogy form a Language so very musical that no Art can mend it For in Boccace's Time who lived above 300 Years ago in the earliest Dawnings of Polite Learning in these Western Parts of the World Italian was a formed Language endued with that peculiar Smoothness which other European Languages wanted and it has since suffered no fundamental Alterations not any at least for the better since in the Dictionary of the Academy della Crusca Boccace's Writings are often appealed to in doubtful Cases which concern the Niceties of the Tongue Now when this Native Smoothness of the Greek Tongue was once discovered to common Ears by the sweetness of their Verses which depended upon a Regular Composition of Long and Short Syllables all Men paid great Respect to their Poets who gave them so delightful an Entertainment The wiser Sort took this Opportunity of Civilizing the rest by putting all their Theological and Philosophical Instructions into Verse which being learnt with Pleasure and remembred with Ease helped to heighten and preserve the Veneration already upon other Scores paid to their Poets This increased the Number of Rivals and every one striving to out-do his Neighbour some by varying their Numbers others by chusing Subjects likely to please here and there some one or two atleast of a sort proved excellent And then those who were the most extraordinary in their several Ways were esteemed as Standards by succeeding Ages and Rules were framed by their Works to examine other Poems of the same sort Thus Aristotle framed Rules of Epick Poesie from Homer Thus Aristophanes Menander Saphocles and Euripides were looked upon as Masters in Dramatick Poesie and their Practice was sufficient Authority Thus Mimnermus Philet as and Callimachus were the Patterns to following Imitators for Elegy and Epigram Now Poetry being a limited Art and these Men after the often-repeated Trials of others had proved successless finding the true Secret of pleasing their Country-men partly by their Wit and Sence and partly by the inimitable Sweetness of their Numbers there is no Wonder that their Successors who were to write to a pre-possessed Audience though otherwise Men of equal perhaps greater Parts failed of that Applause of which the great Masters were already in possession for Copying nauseates more in Poetry than any thing So that Buchanan and Sannazarius tho' admirable Poets are not read with that Pleasure which Men find in Lucretius and Virgil by any but their
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
therefore I shall offer some few Considerations about his Notion Sir William Temple I am sure will not think this a Digression because the Author of the Plurality of Worlds by censuring of the Old Poetry and giving Preference to the New raised his Indignation which no Quality among Men was so apt to raise in him as Sufficiency the worst Composition out of the Pride and Ignorance of Mankind 1. Monsieur Perrault takes it for granted that Cicero was a better Orator than Demosthenes because living after him the World had gone on for above Two Hundred Years constantly improving and adding new Observations necessary to compleat his Art And so by Consequence that the Gentlemen of the Academy must out-do Tully for the same Reasons This Proposition which is the Foundation of a great part of his Book is not very easie to be proved because Mankind loves Variety in those Things wherein it may be had so much that the best Things constantly re-iterated will certainly disgust Sometimes the Age will not bear Subjects upon which an Orator may display his full Force he may often be obliged to little mean Exercises A Thousand Accidents not discoverable at a distance may force Men to stretch their Inventions to spoil that Eloquence which left to it self would do admirable Things And that there is such a Thing as a Decay of Eloquence in After-Ages which have the Performances of those that went before constantly to recurr to and which may be supposed to pretend to Skill and Fineness is evident from the Writings of Seneca and the Younger Pliny compared with Tully's 2. The Ancients cannot justly be accused of not using an exact and artificial Method in their Orations if one examines Tully's Pleadings or reads over Quinctilian's Institutions And if Panegyricks and Funeral-Orations do not seem so regular it is not because Method was little understood but because in those Discourses it was not so necessary Where Men were to reason severely Method was strictly observed And the Vertues discoursed upon in Tully's Offices are as judiciously and clearly digested under their proper Heads as the Subject-Matter of most Discourses written by any Modern Author upon any Subject whatsoever And it does not seem possible to contrive any Poem whose Parts can have a truer or more artful Connexion than Virgil's Aeneis And though it is now objected by Monsieur Perrault as a Fault that he did not carry on his Poem to the Marriage of Aeneas and Lavinia yet we may reasonably think that he had very good Reasons for doing so because in Augustus's Court where Matters of that sort were very well understood it was received with as great Veneration as it has been since and never needed the Recommendation of Antiquity to add to its Authority Nay we can give very probable Reasons at this distance for it It is a Fault in Heroick Poetry to fetch Things from their first Originals And to carry the Thread of the Narrative down to the last Event is altogether as dull As Homer begins not with the Rape of Helen so he does not go so far as the Destruction of Troy Men should rise from Table with some Appetite remaining And a Poem should leave some View of something to follow and not quite shut the Scenes especially if the remaining Part of the Story be not capable of much Ornament nor affords a Variety The Passion of Love with those that always follow upon its being disappointed had been shown already in the Story of Dido But Monsieur Perrault seems to have had his Head possessed with the Idea of French Romances which to be sure must never fail to end in a general Wedding For I observe Secondly That among other Arguments produced by him to prove that the Ancients did not perfect their Oratory and Poesie he urges this That the Mind of Man being an inexhaustible Fund of new Thoughts and Projects every Age added Observations of its own to the former Store so that they still increased in Politeness and by Consequence their Eloquence of all sorts in Verse or Prose must needs be more exact And as a Proof of this Assertion he instances in Matters of Love wherein the Writings of the best bred Gentlemen of all Antiquity for want of Modern Gallantry of which they had no Notion were rude and unpolished if compared with the Poems and Romances of the present Age. Here Monsieur Perrault's Skill in Architecture seems to have deceived him For there is a wide Difference between an Art that having no Antecedent Foundation in Nature owes its first Original to some particular Invention and all its future Improvements to Superstructures raised by other Men upon that first Ground-work and between Passions of the Mind that are Congenial with our Natures where Conversation will polish them even without previous Intentions of doing so and where the Experiences of a few Ages if assisted by Books that may preserve particular Cases will carry them to as great an Heighth as the Things themselves are capable of And therefore he that now examines the Writings of the Ancient Moral Philosophers Aristotle for instance or the Stoicks will find that they made as nice Distinctions in all Matters relating to Vertue and Vice and that they understood Humane Nature with all its Passions and Appetites as accurately as any Philosophers have done since Besides It may be justly questioned whether what Monsieur Perrault calls Politeness be not very often rather an Aberration from and Straining of Nature than an Improvement of the Manners of the Age If so it may reasonably be supposed that those that medled not with the Niceties of Ceremony and Breeding before unpractised rather contemned them as improper or unnatural than omitted them because of the Roughness of the Manners of the Ages in which they lived Ovid and Tibullus knew what Love was in its tenderest Motions they describe its Anxieties and Disappointments in a Manner that raises too too many Passions even in unconcerned Hearts they omit no probable Arts of Courtship and Address and keeping the Mark they aim at still in view they rather chuse to shew their Passion than their Wit And therefore they are not so formal as the Heroes in Pharamond or Cassandra who by pretending to Exactness in all their Methods commit greater Improbabilities than Amadis de Gaule himself In short Durse and Calprenede and the rest of them by over-straining the String have broke it And one can as soon believe that Varillas and Maimbourg wrote the Histories of great Actions just as they were done as that Men ever made Love in such a Way as these Love-and-Honour Men describe That Simplicity therefore of the Ancients which Monsieur Perrault undervalues is so far from being a Mark of Rudeness and Want of Complaisance that their Fault lay in being too Natural in making too lively Descriptions of Things where Men want no Foreign Assistance to help them to form their Idea's and where Ignorance could it be
had is more valuable than any much more than a Critical Knowledge 3. Since By that lowd Trumpet which our Courage aids We learn that Sound as well as Sense persuades the Felicity of a manageable Language when improved by Men of nice Ears and true Judgments is greater and goes further to make Men Orators and Poets than Monsieur Perrault seems willing to allow though there is a plain Reason for his Unwillingness The French Language wants Strength to temper and support its Smoothness for the nobler Parts of Poesie and perhaps of Oratory too though the French Nation wants no Accomplishments necessary to make a Poet or an Orator Therefore their late Criticks are always setting Rules and telling Men what must be done and what omitted if they would be Poets What they find they cannot do themselves shall be so clogged where they may have the Management that others shall be afraid to attempt it They are too fond of their Language to acknowledge where the Fault lies and therefore the chief Thing they tell us is that Sence Connexion and Method are the principal Things to be minded Accordingly they have translated most of the Ancient Poets even the Lyricks into French Prose and from those Translations they pass their Judgments and call upon others to do so too So that when to use Sir J. Denham's Comparison by pouring the Spirits of the Ancient Poetry from one Bottle into another they have lost the most Volatile Parts and the rest becomes flat and insipid these Criticks exclaim against the Ancients as if they did not sufficiently understand Poetical Chymistry This is so great a Truth that even in Oratory it holds though in a less Degree Thucydides therefore has hard Measure to be compared with the Bishop of Meaux when his Oration is turned into another Language whilst Monsieur de Meaux's stands unaltered for though Sence is Sence in every Tongue yet all Languages have a peculiar Way of expressing the same Things which is lost in Translations and much more in Monsieur D' Ablancourt's who professed to mind two very different Things at once to translate his Author and to write elegant Books in his own Language which last he has certainly done and he knew that more Persons could find fault with his Stile if it had been faulty than find out Mistakes in his Rendring of the Greek of Thucydides Besides the Beauty of the Author's Composition is in all Translations entirely lost though the Ancients were superstitiously exact about it and in their elegant Prose as much almost as in their Verse So that a Man can have but half an Idea of the ancient Eloquence and that not always faithful who judges of it without such a Skill in Greek and Latin as can enable him to read Histories Orations and Poems in those Languages with Ease and Pleasure But it is time to return to my Subject CHAP. V. Of Ancient and Modern Grammar GRammar is one of the Sciences which Sir William Temple says that no Man ever disputed with the Ancients As this Assertion is expressed it is a little ambiguous It may be understood of the Skill of the Moderns in the Grammatical Analogy of Latin and Greek or of their Skill in the Grammar of their Mother-Tongues Besides Grammar may either be considered Mechanically or Philosophically Those consider it Mechanically who only examine the Idiotisms and Proprieties of every particular Language and lay down Rules to teach them to others Those consider it as Philosophers who run over the several Steps by which every Language has altered its Idiom who enquire into the several Perfections and Imperfections of those Tongues with which they are acquainted and if they are living Languages propose Methods how to remedy them or at least remove those Obscurities which are thereby occasioned in such Discourses where Truth is only regarded and not Eloquence Now this Mechanical Grammar of Greek and Latin has been very carefully studied by Modern Criticks Sanctius Scioppius and Gerhard Vossius besides a great Number of others who have occasionally shown their Skill in their Illustrations of Ancient Authors have given evident Proofs how well they understood the Latin Tongue So have Caninius Clenard and abundance more in Greek Wherein they have gone upon sure Grounds since besides a great Number of Books in both Languages upon other Subjects abundance of Grammatical Treatises such as Scholia upon difficult Authors Glossaries Onomasticons Etymologicons Rudiments of Grammar c. have been preserved and published by skilful Men most of them at least with great Care and Accuracy So that there is Reason to believe that some Modern Criticks may have understood the Grammatical Construction of Latin as well as Varro or Caesar and of Greek as well as Aristarchus or Herodian But this cannot be pretended to be a new Invention for the Grammar of dead Languages can be only learned by Books And since their Analogy can neither be increased nor diminished it must be left as we find it So that when Sir William Temple says That no Man ever disputed Grammar with the Ancients if he means that we cannot make a new Grammar of a dead Language whose Analogy has been determined almost Two Thousand Years it is what can admit of no Dispute But if he means that Modern Languages have not been Grammatically examined at least not with that Care that some Ancient Tongues have been that is a Proposition which may perhaps be very justly questioned For in the first place it ought to be considered that every Tongue has its own peculiar Form as well as its proper Words not communicable to nor to be regulated by the Analogy of another Language Wherefore he is the best Grammarian who is the perfectest Master of the Analogy of the Language which he is about and gives the truest Rules by which another Man may learn it Next To apply this to our own Tongue it may be certainly affirmed that the Grammar of English is so far our own that Skill in the Learned Languages is not necessary to comprehend it Ben. Johnson was the first Man that I know of that did any Thing considerable in it but Lilly's Grammar was his Pattern and for want of Reflecting upon the Grounds of a Language which he understood as well as any Man of his Age he drew it by Violence to a dead Language that was of a quite different Make and so left his Work imperfect After him came Dr. Wallis who examined the English Tongue like a Grammarian and a Philosopher at once and showed great Skill in that Business And of his English Grammar one may venture to say That it may be set against any Thing that is extant of the Ancients of that kind For as Sir William Temple says upon another Occasion there is a Strain of Philosophy and curious Thought in his previous Essay of the Formation of the Sounds of Letters and of Subtilty in the Grammar in the reducing of our Language under
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
set down in Herodotus but then they are set down as Traditions and which is more they are solely to be found in him though he is not the only ancient Writer that mentions the Pyramids he only names Cheops and Mycerinus who are differently named by other Historians and the Time when they lived is as little agreed upon as the Names by which they are called The History of a Nation can sure be worth very little that could not preserve the Memory of the Names at least if not the Time of those Princes who were at so much Pains to be remembred in a Place where their Monuments were so very visible that no Person could ever sail up and down the Nile to or from their capital City Memphis without taking Notice of them and every Man upon his first seeing of them would naturally ask what they were by whom and for what Intent erected To which we may add that these very Buildings are more exactly described in Mr Greaves's Pyramidographia than in any ancient Author now extant The Difficulty of determining the Age when Sesostris lived is another Instance of the Carelesness of the Egyptian Historians Either he was the same with Sheshak who invaded Judaea in Rehoboam's Time as Sir John Marsham asserts after Josephus or not If he was his Time is known indeed but then the Authority of Manetho and of those Pillars from which Manetho pretended to transcribe the Tables of the several Dynasties of the Egyptian Kings is at an End besides it contradicts all the Greek Writers that mention Sesostris who place him in their fabulous Age and generally affirm that he lived before the Expedition of the Argonauts which preceded the War of Troy If he was not that Sheshak then the Time when the only famous Conqueror of the Egyptian Nation lived is uncertain and all that they know of him is that once upon a time there was a mighty King in Egypt who conquered Ethiopia Arabia Assyria and up to Colchis with Asia the Less and the Islands of the Aegean Sea where having left Marks of his Power he returned home again to reap the Fruits of his Labours A Tradition which might have been preserved without setting up a College at Heliopolis for that Purpose The very learned Mr. Dodwell in his Discourse concerning the Phoenician History of Sanchoniathon advances a Notion which may help to give a very probable Account of those vast Antiquities of the Egyptians pretended to by Manetho He thinks that after the History of Moses was translated into Greek and so made common to the learned Men of the neighbouring Nations that they endeavoured to rival them by pretended Antiquities of their own that so they might not seem to come behind a People who till then had been so obscure This though particularly applied by Mr. Dodwell to Sanchoniathon's History seems equally forcible in the present Controversie For Manetho dedicated his History to Ptolemee Philadelphus at whose Command it was written and wrote it about the Time that the LXXII Interpreters translated the Pentateuch The great Intercourse which the Egyptians and Israelites formerly had each with other made up a considerable part of that Book and occasioned its being the more taken Notice of so that this History being injurious to the vain pretences of that People might very probably provoke some that were jealous for the Honour of their Nation and Manetho amongst the rest to set up an Anti-History to that of Moses and to dedicate it to the same Prince who employed the Jews to translate the Pentateuch and who ordered Manetho himself to bring him in an Account of the Egyptian Antiquities that so any Prejudices which Ptolemee who was of another Nation himself might entertain against their Country might be effectually removed This Notion is the more probable in our Case because it equally holds whether we follow Sir John Marsham's Accounts who has made the Egyptian Antiquities intelligible or whether they are left in the same Confusion that they were in before That most Learned Gentleman has reduced the wild Heap of Egyptian Dynasties into as narrow a Compass as the History of Moses according to the Hebrew Account by the help of a Table of the Theban Kings which he found under Eratosthenes's Name in the Chronography of Syncellus For by that Table he 1. Distinguished the Fabulous and Mystical Part of the Egyptian History from that which seems to look like Matter of Fact 2. He reduced the Dynasties into Collateral Families reigning at the same time in several Parts of the Country which as some learned Men saw before was the only Way to make those Antiquities consistent with themselves which till then were confused and incoherent But it seems evident by the Remains that we have of Manetho in Eusebius and by the Accounts which we have of the Egyptian History in Josephus's Books against Appion and in the Ancient Christian Writers that the Egyptians in Ptolemee's Time did not intend to confine themselves within the Limits set by Moses but resolved to go many Thousand Years beyond them If therefore Eratosthenes's Table be genuine not only Manetho's Authority sinks but the Pillars from whence he transcribed his Tables of the Kings of their several Dynasties are Impostures since they pretend to give successive Tables of vast Numbers of Kings reigning in several Families for many Ages which ought to be contracted into a Period of Time not much exceeding Two Thousand Years If the Table of Eratosthenes be not the true Rule by which the Egyptian Antiquities are to be squared then the former Prejudices will return in full force and one cannot value Tables and Pillars and Priests that could not fix the Time of the Erection of the Pyramids and the Age of Sesostris so certainly as that when Herodotus was in the Country they might have been able to inform him a little better than they did This long Enquiry into the Egyptian History will not I hope be thought altogether a Digression from my Subject because it weakens the Egyptians Credit in a very sensible Part For if their Civil History is proved to be egregiously fabulous or inconsistent there will be no great Reason to value their mighty Boasts in any thing else at least not to believe them upon their own Words without other Evidence In Mathematicks the Egyptians are of all Hands allowed to have laid the first Foundations The Question therefore is how far they went Before this can be answered satisfactorily one ought to enquire whether Pythagoras and Thales who went so far to get Knowledge would not have learnt all that the Egyptians could teach them Or whether the Egyptians would willingly impart all they knew The former I suppose no Body questions For the latter we are to distinguish between Things that are concealed out of Interest and between other things which for the same Interest are usually made publick The Secret's of the Egyptian Theology were not proper to be discovered because
by those Mysteries they kept the People in awe The Philosopher's Stone likewise if they had been Masters of it might for Gain have been concealed And Medicinal Arcana are of Advantage oftentimes to the Possessors chiefly because they are Arcana But Abstracted Mathematical Theories which bring Glory to the Inventors when they are communicated to those that can relish them and which bring no Profit when they are locked up are never concealed from such as shew a Desire to learn them provided that by such a Discovery the first Inventors are not deprived of the Glory of their Inventions which is increased by publishing if they have before-hand taken Care to secure their Right So that we may reasonably conclude that when Pythagoras is commended for no famous Invention in Geometry except the 47th Proposition of the First Book of Euclid that he brought nothing of more Moment in that Way with him out of Egypt and therefore either the further Discoveries that were made in Geometry were made by the Egyptians afterwards or which is more probable they were Grecian Superstructures upon those Foundations Besides though a Man travelled into Egypt yet it does not follow from thence that he learnt all his Knowledge there So that though Archimedes and Euclid were in Egypt yet they might for all that have been Inventors themselves of those noble Theorems which are in their Writings In Archimedes's Time Greeks lived in Alexandria and the Learning of Egypt could no more at that time be attributed to the old Egyptians than the Learning of Archbishop Usher Sir James Ware and Mr. Dodwell can be attributed to a Succession of those learned Irish-men who were so considerable in the Saxon Times This last Consideration is of very great Moment for few of the Greeks after Plato went into Egypt purely for Knowledge and though Plato brought several of his Notions out of Egypt which he interwove into his Philosophy yet the Philosophers of the Alexandrian School who for the most part were Platonists shew by their Way of Writing and by their frequent Citations out of Plato's Books that they chose to take those Things from the Grecians which one would think might have been had nearer home if they had been of the Original Growth of the Country The most considerable Propositions in Euclid's Elements were attributed to the Greeks and we have nothing confessedly Egyptian to oppose to the Writings of Archimedes Apollonius Pergaeus or Diophantus Whereas had there been any Thing considerable it would most certainly have been produced or at least hinted at by some of those very learned Egyptians or rather later Greeks born in Egypt whose Writings that treat of the Extent of the Egyptian Knowledge are still extant Having now examined the History and Geometry of the Egyptians it will be much easier to go through their Pretences or rather the Pretences of their Advocates to Superiority in other Parts of Learning The Egyptians seem to have verified the Proverb That he that has but one Eye is a Prince among those that have none This was Glory enough for it is always very honourable to be the First where the Strife is concerning Things which are worth contending for CHAP. X. Of the Natural Philosophy Medicine and Alchemy of the Ancient Egyptians THE Egyptian Natural Philosophy and Physick shall be joined together because there is so great an Affinity between them that true Notions in either Science assist the other Their Physick indeed was very famous in Homer's Time And wonderful Things are told of Hermes the pretended Father of the Chymical Art But one ought to distinguish between particular Medicines how noble soever and general Theories founded upon a due Examination of the Nature of those Bodies from whence such Medicines are drawn and of the Constitution and Fabrick of the Bodies of the Patients to whom they are to be applied and of the incidental Circumstances of Time and Place which are necessary to be taken in by a wise Physician The Stories of the West-Indian Medicines are many of them very astonishing and those Salvages knew perfectly how to use them and yet they were never esteemed able Physicians This Instance is applicable to the present Question Galen often mentions Egyptian Remedies in his Treatises of Medicines which are numerous and large yet he seldom mentions any of their Hypotheses from which only a Man can judge whether the Egyptians were well-grounded Physicians or Empiricks This is the more remarkable because Galen had lived long at Alexandria and commends the Industry of the Alexandrians in cultivating Anatomy which is so necessary a Part of a Physician 's Business In general therefore we may find that all the Egyptian Notions of Physical Matters were built upon Astrological and Magical Grounds Either the Influence of a particular Planet or of some tutelar Daemon were still considered These Foundations are precarious and impious and they put a Stop to any Increase of real Knowledge which might be made upon other Principles He that minds the Position of the Stars or invokes the Aid of a Daemon will rarely be sollicitous to examine nicely into the Nature of his Remedies or the Constitution of his Patients without which none of the ancient rational Physicians believed that any Man could arrive at a perfect Knowledge of their Art So that if Hippocrates learn'd his Skill in Egypt as it is pretended the Egyptian Physicians afterwards took a very stupid Method to run upon imaginary Scents so far as even to lose the Memory that they had ever pursued more rational Methods Those that would be further satisfied of the Truth of this Matter of Fact may find it abundantly proved in Conringius's Discourse of the old Egyptian Medicine But we are told that there was a particular sort of Physick used only amongst the Egyptian Priests which was kept secret not only from the Greeks that came into their Country for Knowledge but from the Generality of the Natives themselves wherein by the Help of the Grand Elixir they could do almost any thing but restore Life to the Dead This Elixir which was a Medicine made with the Philosophers Stone was a Chymical Preparation And if we may believe Olaus Borrichius the Great and Learned Advocate of the Chymical and Adept Philosophers was the Invention of Hermes who was contemporary with Isis and Osiris whose Age none ever yet determined If these Claims are true there is no Question but the Egyptians understood Nature at least that of Metals in a very high Degree This is an Application of Agents to Patients which if made good will go farther than any Assertion commonly brought to prove the extent of Egyptian Knowledge And therefore I presume I shall not be thought tedious if I enlarge more particularly upon this Question than I have done upon the rest especially since there has not been that I know of any direct Answer ever Printed to Borrichius's Book upon this Argument which he wrote against the
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
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
and a Nipple towards which several of those small Pipes tend and through which the Urine ouzes out of them into the Basin This clear Use of the Structure of the Reins has effectually confuted several Notions that Men had entertained of some Secundary Uses of those Parts since hereby it appears that every Part of the Kidneys is immediately and wholly subservient to that single Use of Freeing the Blood from its superfluous Serum What has been done by Modern Anatomists towards the Compleating of the Knowledge of the remaining Parts I shall omit That the Ancients likewise took Pains about them is evident from the Writings of Hippocrates Aristotle and Galen The Discoveries which have since been made are so great that they are in a manner undisputed And the Books which treat of them are so well known that it will not be suspected that I decline to enlarge upon them out of a Dread of giving up more to the Ancients in this Particular than I have done all along The Discoveries hitherto mentioned have been of those Parts of Humours of the Body whose Existence was well enough known to the Ancients But besides them other Humours with Vessels to separate contain and carry them to several Parts of the Body have been taken notice of of which in strictness the Ancients cannot be said to have any sort of Knowledge These are the Lympha or Colourless Juice which is carried to the Chyle and Blood from separate Parts of the Body And the Mucilage of the Joints which lubricates them and the Muscles in their Motions The Discovery of the Lympha which was made about Forty Years ago is contended for by several Persons Thomas Bartholine a Dane and Olaus Rudbeck a Suede published their Observations about the same Time And Dr. Jolliffe an English-Man shewed the same to several of his Friends but without publishing any Thing concerning them The Discoveries being undoubted and all Three working upon the same Materials there seems no Reason to deny any of them the Glory of their Inventions The Thing which they found was that there are innumerable small clear Vessels in many Parts of the Body chiefly in the Lower Belly which convey a Colourless Juice either into the common Receptacle of the Chyle or else into the Veins there to mix with the Blood The Valves which Frederic Ruysch found and demonstrated in them about the same Time manifestly shewed that this is its Road because they prove that the Lympha can go forwards from the Liver Spleen Lungs Glands of the Loins and Neck or any other Place whence they arise towards some Chyliferous Duct or Vein but cannot go back from those Chyliferous Ducts or Veins to the Place of their Origination What this Origination is was long uncertain it not being easie to trace the several Canals up to their several Sources Steno and Malpighius did with infinite Labour find that Abundance of Lympheducts passed through those numerous Conglobate Glands that are dispersed in the Abdomen and Thorax which made them think that the Arterious Blood was there purged of its Lympha that was from thence carried off into its proper Place by a Vessel of its own But Mr. Nuck has since found that the Lympheducts arise immediately from Arteries themselves and that many of them are percolated through those Conglobate Glands in their Way to the Receptacle of the Chyle or those Veins which receive them By these and innumerable other Observations the Uses of the Glands of the Body have been found out all agreeing in this one Thing namely that they separate the several Juices that are discernable in the Body from the Mass of the Blood wherein they lay before From their Texture they have of late been divided into Conglomerate and Conglobate The Conglomerate Glands consist of many smaller Glands which lie near one another covered with one common Membrane with one or more common Canals into which the separated Juice is poured by little Pipes coming from every smaller Glandule as in the Liver the Kidneys the Pancreas and Salival Glands of the Mouth The Conglobate Glands are single often without an Excretory Duct of their own only perforated by the Lympheducts Of all which Things as essential to the Nature of Glands the Ancient Anatomists had no sort of Notion The Mucilage of the Joints and Muscles was found out by Dr. Havers He discovered in every Joint particular Glands out of which issues a Mucilaginous Substance whose Nature he examined by numerous Experiments which with the Marrow supplied by the Bones always serves to oil the Wheels that so our Joints and Muscles might answer those Ends of Motion for which Nature designed them This was a very useful Discovery since it makes Abundance of Things that were very obscure in that Part of Anatomy very plain and facile to be understood And among other Things it shews the Use of that excellent Oil which is contained in our Bones and there separated by proper Strainers from the Mass of the Blood especially since by a nice Examination of the true inward Texture of all the Bones and Cartilages of the Body he shew'd how this Oil is communicated to the Mucilage and so united as to perform their Office And if one compares what Dr. Havers says of Bones and Cartilages with what had been said concerning them before him his Observations about their Frame may well be added to some of the noblest of all the former Discoveries These are some of the most remarkable Instances how far the Knowledge of the Frame of our Bodies has been carried in our Age. Several Observations may be made concerning them which will be of Use to the present Question 1. It is evident that only the most visible Things were anciently known such only as might be discovered without great Nicety Muscles and Bones are easily separable their Length is soon traced and their Origination easily known The same may be truly said of large Blood-Vessels and Nerves But when they come to be exquisitely sub-divided when their Smalness will not suffer the Eye much less the Hand to follow them then the Ancients were constantly at a Loss For which Reason they understood none of the Viscera to any tolerable Degree 2. One may perceive that every new Discovery strengthens what went before otherwise the World would soon have heard of it and the erroneous Theories of such Pretenders to new Things would have been exploded and forgotten unless by here and there a curious Man that pleases himself with reading Obsolete Books Nullius in verba is not only the Motto of the ROYAL SOCIETY but a received Principle among all the Philosophers of the present Age And therefore when once any new Discoveries have been examined and received we have more Reason to acquiesce in them than there was formerly This is evident in the Circulation of the Blood Several Veins and Arteries have been found at least more exactly traced since than they were in Dr.
little for After-comers have rather than not contribute their Proportion towards the Advancement of Knowledge spent a World of Time Pains and Cost in examining the Excrescencies of all the Parts of Trees Shrubs and Herbs in observing the critical Times of the Changes of all sorts of Caterpillars and Maggots in finding out by the Knife and Microscopes the minutest parts of the smallest Animals in examining every Crevice and poring in every Ditch in tracing every Insect up to its Original Egg and all this with as great Diligence as if they had had an Alexander to have given them as many Talents as he is said to have given to his Master Aristotle I shall put Fishes Fowls and Quadrupeds together because the Question as it relates to the Natural History of these Animals may be brought into a small Compass For as to the Anatomical part it is certain That every Instance of the Defect of Ancient Anatomy already mentioned is a Proof how little the Texture of the inward Parts of all these Creatures could possibly be known and consequently that no Old Descriptions of these Animals which should go beyond the parts immediately visible would have been considerable There is hardly one eminent Modern Discovery in Anatomy which was not first found in Brutes and afterwards adjusted to humane Bodies Many of them could never have been known without the Help of Live-dissections and the rest required Abundance of Trials upon great Numbers of different sorts of Beasts some appearing plainer in one sort of Animals and some in another before the Discoverers themselves could frame such a clear Idea of the things which they were then in Pursuit of as that they could readily look for them in Humane Bodies which could not be procured in so great Plenty and of which they had not always the Convenience All which things extremely tended to the perfecting of the Anatomy of all sorts of Brutes About the other Part which may comprehend an Account of their Way of Living their Uses to humane Life their Sagacity and the like the Ancients took much Pains and went very far And there are a great many admirable things in Aristotle's History of Animals concerning all these Matters What Helps he had from Writers that lived before him we know not if he had but little it must be owned that his Book is one of the greatest Instances of Industry and Sagacity that perhaps has ever been given But since the Question is not so much whether that is an excellent Book as whether it is perfect it ought to be compared with Mr. Willoughby's Histories of Fishes and Birds and Mr. Ray's Synopsis of Quadrupeds as the perfectest Modern Books upon these Matters and then it will be easie to make a Judgment I shall not make it my self because no Man can mistake that compares them though never so negligently together I name only Aristotle because he is to us at least an original Author He had examined very many things himself and though he took a great deal upon trust yet that could not be avoided since he had so little that we know of from more remote Antiquity and it was too vast a Work for any one single Man to go through with by himself Aelian and Pliny seem only to have copied and with Submission be it spoken their Writings are Rhapsodies of Stories and Relations partly true and partly fabulous which themselves had not Skill enough to separate one from the other rather than Natural Histories from which Accusation even Aristotle himself cannot wholly be excused To make this Comparison the easier one may consult Gesner and Aldrovandus or if they are too voluminous Wotton De Differentiis Animalium who has put under one View in several Heads almost every thing that is to be found in any ancient Authors concerning these things What he has collected of the Elephant may be compared with Dr. Moulin's Anatomy of the same Creature The Ancients Observation concerning Vipers may be read along with Rhedi's and Charas's Their Anatomical Descriptions of many other Animals may be examined with those published by the Members of the French Academy and Mr. Ray in his Synopsis And then the Imperfections of the one and the Excellencies of the other will be clearly seen and the Distance between each exactly stated though perhaps this may seem too far about since it is manifest at first Sight That no ancient Descriptions of any Creatures could be at present valuable when their whole Anatomy was so imperfect Some mistakes however might methinks have been prevented the Egyptian Sages could sure have taught them that a Crocodile moves his under-Jaw and not his upper they might soon have found that a Lion has Vertebres in his Neck and with them by Consequence can move it upon Occasion and has as large a Heart as other Creatures of his Size that a Porcupine shoots out none of his Quills upon those that set upon him and several other things which would have prevented several Over-sights that are not much for the Honour of Ancient Diligence This would have saved Abundance of fabulous Relations that may be found in ancient Naturalists Their heaping up monstrous Stories without giving distinguishing Marks many times to testifie which they believed and which not is an evident Sign that they were not enough acquainted with these Creatures to make a thorough Judgment what might be relied upon and what ought to be rejected For accurate Skill in these things helps a Man to judge as certainly of those Relations which himself never saw as Political Skill does to judge of Accounts of Matters that belong to civil Life and a great deal better by how much Nature goes in an evener Course than the Wills and Fancies of Men which are the Foundations of most of the Things that are transacted in the World CHAP. XXIII Of Ancient and Modern Astronomy and Opticks HAving now gone through with the several Parts of Natural History I am to enquire into the State of Physico-Mathematical and Physical Sciences Such as Astronomy Opticks Musick and Medicks I put Astronomy first because of the vast Extent and real Nobleness of its Subject and also because it has suffered the least Eclipse of any part of Knowledge whatsoever in the barbarous Times For when the Greeks neglected it the Arabs and from them the Spaniards took it up That this Enquiry might be the more exactly made and that you might be throughly convinced of the Truth in this Matter to which chiefly our Obligation lies Mr. Edmond Halley whose Labours towards the Advancement of this Science have made him famous in so many distant Parts of the World did me the Favour to communicate this following Paper As for the Astronomy of the Ancients this is usually reckoned for one of those Sciences wherein consisted the Learning of the Egyptians and Strabo expresly declares That there were in Babylonia several Universities wherein Astronomy was chiefly professed and Pliny tells us much the same
thing So that it might well be expected that where such a Science was so much studied it ought to have been proportionably cultivated Notwithstanding all which it does appear That there was nothing done by the Chaldaeans older than about CCCC Years before Alexander's Conquest that could be serviceable either to Hipparchus or Ptolemee in their Determination of the celestial Motions For had there been any Observations older than those we have it cannot be doubted but the victorious Greeks must have procured them as well as those they did they being still more valuable for their Antiquity All we have of them is only Seven Eclipses of the Moon preserved in Ptolemee's Syntaxis and even those but very coursely set down and the oldest not much above 700 Years before Christ so that after all the Fame of these Chaldaeans we may be sure they had not gone far in this Science and though Callisthenes be said by Porphyry to have brought from Babylon to Greece Observations above MDCCCC Years older than Alexander yet the proper Authors making no Mention or Use of any such renders it justly suspected for a Fable What the Egyptians did in this Matter is less evident no one Observation made by them being to be found in their Country-man Ptolemee excepting what was done by the Greeks of Alexandria under CCC Years before Christ. So that whatever was the Learning of these Two ancient Nations as to the Motions of the Stars it seems to have been chiefly Theorical and I will not deny but some of them might very long since be apprized of the Sun 's being the Center of our System for such was the Doctrine of Pythagoras and Philolaus and some others who were said to have travelled into these Parts From hence it may appear That the Greeks were the first practical Astronomers who endeavoured in earnest to make themselves Masters of the Science and to whom we owe all the old Observations of the Planets and of the Equinoxes and Tropicks Thales was the first that could predict an Eclipse in Greece not DC Years before Christ and without doubt it was but a rude Account he had of the Motions and 't was Hipparchus who made the first Catalogue of the Fix'd-Stars not above CL Years before Christ without which Catalogue there could be scarce such a Science as Astronomy and it is to the Subtilty and Diligence of that great Author that the World was beholding for all its Astronomy for above MD Years All that Ptolemee did in his Syntaxis was no more but a bare Transcription of the Theories of Hipparchus with some little Emendation of the periodical Motions after about CCC Years Interval and this Book of Ptolemee's was without Dispute the utmost Perfection of the Ancient Astronomy nor was there any thing in any Nation before it comparable thereto for which Reason all the other Authors thereof were disregarded and lost and among them Hipparchus himself Nor did Posterity dare to alter the Theories delivered by Ptolemee though successively Albategnius and the Arabs and after them the Spanish Astronomers under Alphonsus endeavoured to amend the Errors they observed in their Computations But their Labours were fruitless whilst from the Defects of their Principles it was impossible to reconcile the Moon 's Motion within a Degree nor the Planets Mars and Mercury to a much greater Space Now in this Science to compare the Ancients with the Moderns and so make a Parallel as just as may be I oppose the Noble Tycho Brahe or Hevelius to Hipparchus and John Kepler to Claudius Ptolemee and I suppose no one acquainted with the Stars will doubt That the Catalogue of the Fix'd-Stars made by Tycho Brahe about C Years since does beyond Competition far excel that of Hipparchus being commonly true to a Minute or Two when the other many times fails half a Degree both in Longitude and Latitude and this is the fairlier carried for that it was as easie for Hipparchus to observe the Fixd'-Stars as for Tycho or Hevelius had he made Use of the same Industry and Instruments the Telescope wherewith we now observe to the utmost possible Nicety being equally unknown to Tycho as to Hipparchus and not used by Hevelius But what may justly be expected from Monsieur Cassini and Mr. Flamsteed in this Matter does yet further advance in preciseness as not capable to err half a mioute though made with Instruments of the Production of Gresham As to the other Comparison between Kepler and Ptolemee I question not but all that can judge will be fully convinced that the Hypothesis of Eccentricks and Epicycles introduced by the Ancients only to represent the Motions and that but coursely too with the Opinion of Ptolemee himself thereon that the natural Motions were otherwise performed ought not to be valued against that elegant Theory of the planetary Motions first invented by the acute Diligence of Kepler and now lately demonstrated by that excellent Geometer Mr. Newton viz. That all the Planets move in Elliptick Orbs about the Sun at whose Center being placed in one Focus of the Eclipse they describe equal Area's in equal times this as it is the necessary result of the Laws of Motion and Gravity is also found rigorously to answer to all that is observed in the Motions so that the Moderns may with as much Reason as in any other Science whatsoever value themselves on their having improved I had almost said perfected this of Astronomy Optical Instruments have been so serviceable in the Advancement of Astronomy that the Sciences which demonstrate their wonderful Properties ought next to be considered Here also I must own my Obligation to Mr. Halley for this following Account of what the Ancients have done in them and how much they have been out-done by Modern Mathematicians I suppose there are few so thorough-paced Fautors of Antiquity as to brag much of their Skill either in Opticks or Dioptricks Their Want of Opticks appears in their Want of Authors treating thereon and yet much better in their Want of Ordonnance as it is called in their Paintings and Basse Relieve's as has been already said in its proper Place And as to Dioptricks though some of the Ancients mention Refraction as a natural Effect of transparent Media yet Des Cartes was the first who in this Age has discovered the Laws of Refraction and brought Dioptricks to a Science And the Invention of Telescopes and Microscopes which must be wholly allowed to this Century has received no small Improvements from the Study and Charge of Sir Paul Neile and some other Members of Gresham And these are such Instruments of real Knowledge that though we will allow the Ancients to have done all that great Genii with due Application could arrive at yet for want of them their Philosophical Argumentation could not come up to the present Pitch not being able to fathom the boundless Depths of the Heavens nor to unravel the Minutiae of Nature without the Assistance of the Glasses we are
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
I do not desire that any disputable things should ever be brought under Debate One Qualification indeed and that the greatest of all I have omitted but that relates not to the present Controversie since we are not now enquiring who were the holiest Men but who have been the greatest Masters of their Professions the ancient Fathers or the Modern Divines The first thing required is an exact Knowledge of the Text of the Old Testament Herein even the LXX Interpreters themselves have often failed as has been abundantly proved by Modern Criticks The Copies they used were sometimes faulty and since they did not mend those Faults it is very probable they did not see them It has been observed already That scarce any of the Fathers understood Hebrew besides Origen and St. Hierom who therefore were followed as Oracles by many of their Successors even that alone will not suffice because there are no other Books written in that Language For which Reason Syriac Chaldee Samaritan and Arabic have been studied by Modern Criticks not to mention the Writings of the Rabbins and the Talmudists to which the Ancients were utter Strangers If we come to Particulars who of the Ancients ever unravelled the Chronology of the Old Testament like Archbishop Usher and Sir John Marsham Though Eusebius's Chronicon is a standing Evidence how much he and Julius Africanus before him endeavoured to clear that Matter which was of so great Use to confound the vain Pretences to Antiquity of those other Nations that were so very unwilling to yield to the Jews in this Particular Who has ever given so rational and so intelligible an Account of the Design and Intent of the several parts of the ceremonial Law as Dr. Spencer Who has acquainted the World with the Geography of Genesis or the Natural History of the Bible like Monsieur Bochart These are much harder things than the lengthning of a fine-spun Allegory or than a few moral Reflections which constitute the greatest part of the Ancient Comments But the New Testament you will say was written in a Time that was nearer at Hand and so was certainly better understood Without doubt it was by the First Fathers for which Reason their Interpretations and their Reasonings if we could have recovered many of them would have been of infinite Value But when once the Synagogue and the Church broke off all their Correspondence when once the immediate Reasons of the first Establishment of many Parts of the Christian Discipline and of great Numbers of Allusions to Jewish Customs and Traditions which are to be found in the New Testament could only be known by Study and Reading all which the first Christians knew without Study as we do the Manners and Fashions of our own Age and Country then the ancient Interpretations of the New Testament began to fail and though some of them S. Chrysostom's and Theodoret's especially are in themselves setting Antiquity aside truly valuable yet for want of such a diffused Knowledge of Eastern Antiquities as was necessary and which only could be had by a long Conversation with the Books that are written in those Languages these admirable Commentators seem in several Places not to have found out the true Original of many things in the New Testament which have been discovered since To the next Thing which is Skill in Ecclesiastical Antiquity I have spoken already The Third and the Fourth which relate to a Divine as a Casuist or as a Preacher may be considered of together wherein we of the present Age may without Vanity boast of having the best Books and of them too the greatest Numbers upon these Subjects written in our own Language and by our own Countrymen of any People in the World The Excellency of a Casuist is to give such Resolutions of Doubts and Questions proposed to him as may both suit with the particular Circumstances of the Person who desires Satisfaction and also may be perfectly agreeable to the Law of God A Preacher then seems to perform his Office best when he can at once instruct and move his Auditors can raise their Passions and inform their Judgment That so every Sermon upon a Doctrinal Head may contain the Solution of a Case of Conscience For the first of these It is certain that many of the ablest of the Ancient Fathers were very excellent Casuists as indeed every Man who has a right Judgment an honest Mind and a thorough Acquaintance with the Design of our Blessed Saviour revealed in the Gospel must of necessity be And if at this distance many of their Decisions seem over-severe there is as great at least if not greater Reason to suspect that the Complaints now-a-days raised against them may arise from our Degeneracy as from their unwarrantable Strictness But for the Ancient Way of Preaching there is much more to be said The great Handle by which an Hearer is enabled to carry along with him a Preacher's Arguments is Method and Order Herein the Ancient Homilists are very defective Flights of Rhetorick which are more or less judiciously applied according to the Abilities of the several Preachers make up the greatest part of their Discourses And after Origen most Men busied themselves in giving the People Allegorical Interpretations of Passages of Scriptures which were infinite according to the Fancies of those that used them St. Chrysostom indeed reformed this Custom in the Greek Church His Authority went very far and his Interpretations were almost always Literal and suitably to his vast Genius very judicious But he that considers Preaching as an Art capable of Rules and Improvement will find a mighty Difference between a just methodical Discourse built upon a proper Text of Scripture wherein after the Text is carefully explained some one Duty or Doctrine of Religion thence arising is plainly proved by just and solid Arguments from which such Topicks of Persuasion are drawn at last as are the most likely to raise such an Affection and engage those Passions in the Minds of all the Auditors as will please and move good Men and silence at least if not persuade the Bad and between a loose paraphrastical Explication of a large Portion of Scripture which ends at last in a general Ethical Harangue which is the usual Method of most of St. Chrysostom's Homilies Whereas by the former Method strictly followed very many of our English Sermons especially those of the Great Men of our own Church since the Restauration are Solutions of the most difficult Questions in Divinity and just Discourses upon the several Duties of the Christian Life and this with so much Smoothness so great Beauty of Language and such a just Application of the greatest Ornaments of True and Masculine Eloquence to Things at first View very often the most opposite that the Hearer takes a Pleasure to think that then he is most instructed when he is best pleased The Want of this Method in the Ancient Homilists is the great Reason why they are so little read
their Charms and Plato and Aristotle untranslated were frequent Ornaments of their Closets One would think by the Effects that it was a proper Way of Educating of them since there are no Accounts in History of so many very great Women in any one Age as are to be found between the Years 15 and 1600. This Humour in both Sexes abated by Degrees and the Great Men being either disgusted with the Labour that was requisite to become thoroughly Learned or with the frequent Repetitions of the same Things Business and Diversions took up their Thoughts as they had done formerly But yet in the main the Learned Men of this Age have not so very much Reason to think themselves ill used as it is commonly thought What by Fellowships of Colleges and Ecclesiastical Preferments here in England and by the same sort of Preferments added to the Allowances in several Monastical Orders in Popish Countries there are very fair Settlements for Men of Studious and Sedentary Lives and innumerable Instances can be given in these two last Ages of the excellent Uses which very many Men have made of them So that every such Preferment bestowed upon any learned Man upon the Score of his Merit by Princes or Great Men in whose Gift they were is an Instance of their Beneficence to Men of Letters And whether a Man is considered by a Pension out of a Prince's Exchequer or by the Collation of a Preferment in that Prince's Gift it is to the Man who enjoys it the self-same Thing Neither have Examples been wanting in the present Age of Sovereign Princes who have made it as much their Business to encourage Learned Men as perhaps in any of the former that are so much commended for that very Reason Christina Queen of Sweden who in other Respects was by no Means the Glory of her Sex did whilst she lived at Stockholm send for the learnedest Men of Europe to come to her that she might converse with them about those Things wherein they were most excellent Des Cartes Salmasius Bochart Nich. Heinsius Isaac Vossius were of that Number And her Profuseness which knew no Bounds was never more visible than in her Marks of Respect to Men of Letters Afterwards when she setled at Rome her Palace was always an Academy of the Virtuosi of that City The present French King whilst Monsieur Colbert lived took a singular Pride in sending Presents to the most celebrated Scholars of Europe without regarding whether they were his own Subjects or of his own Religion or no. This he did purely for his Glory the Principle which Sir William Temple so very much applauds His own Protestant Subjects before he involved them in one common Ruin tasted of his Liberality of that Kind upon Occasion And whatsoever his other Actions are and have been yet his extraordinary Care to breed up his Son to Learning his erecting of Academies for Arts and Sciences at Paris and his frequent Bounties to Men of Letters justly require that upon this Account he should be mentioned with Honour Cardinal de Richelieu Cardinal Mazarini Monsieur Fouquet and Monsieur Colbert though no Sovereign Princes yet had Purses greater than many of them Cardinal de Richelieu was himself a Scholar and all of them were eminently Favourers of Learned Men. I have mentioned my own Country last that I might once more observe that it was a Prince of our own who founded the ROYAL SOCIETY whose Studies Writings and Productions though they have not out-shined or eclipsed the Lycaeum of Plato the Academy of Aristotle the Stoa of Zeno or the Garden of Epicurus because they were neither written at the same Time nor for the most part upon the same Subjects yet will always help to keep alive the Memory of that Prince who incorporated them into a Body that so they might the easier do that by their Joint-Labours which singly would have been in a manner impossible to be effected The last of Sir William Temple's Reasons of the great Decay of Modern Learning is Pedantry the urging of which is an evident Argument that his Discourse is levelled against Learning not as it stands now but as it was Fifty or Sixty Years ago For the new Philosophy has introduced so great a Correspondence between Men of Learning and Men of Business which has also been encreased by other Accidents amongst the Masters of other learned Professions that that Pedantry which formerly was almost universal is now in a great Measure dis-used especially amongst the young Men who are taught in the Universities to laugh at that frequent Citation of Scraps of Latin in common Discourse or upon Arguments that do not require it and that nauseous Ostentation of Reading and Scholarship in publick Companies which formerly was so much in Fashion Affecting to write politely in Modern Languages especially the French and ours has also helped very much to lessen it because it has enabled Abundance of Men who want Academical Education to talk plausibly and some exactly upon very many learned Subjects This also has made Writers habitually careful to avoid those Impertinences which they know would be taken notice of and ridiculed and it is probable that a careful perusal of the fine new French Books which of late Years have been greedily sought after by the politer sort of Gentlemen and Scholars may in this particular have done Abundance of good By this means and by the Help also of some other concurrent Causes those who were not learned themselves being able to maintain Disputes with those that were forced them to talk more warily and brought them by little and little to be out of Countenance at that vain thrusting of their Learning into every thing which before had been but too visible Conclusion THis seems to me to be the present State of Learning as it may be compared with what it was in Former Ages Whether Knowledge will improve in the next Age proportionably as it has done in this is a Question not easily decided It depends upon a great many Circumstances which singly will be ineffectual and which no Man can now be assured will ever meet There seems Reason indeed to fear that it may decay both because ancient Learning is too much studied in Modern Books and taken upon trust by Modern Writers who are not enough acquainted with Antiquity to correct their own mistakes and because Natural and Mathematical Knowledge wherein chiefly the Moderns are to be studied as Originals begin to be neglected by the Generality of those who would set up for Scholars For the Humour of the Age as to those things is visibly altered from what it was Twenty or Thirty Years ago So that though the ROYAL SOCIETY has weathered the rude Attacks of such sort of Adversaries as Stubbe who endeavoured to have it thought That Studying of Natural Philosophy and Mathematicks was a ready Method to introduce Scepticism at least if not Atheism into the World Yet the sly Insinuations of