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
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
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
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
Chymical Medicine i They first extracted Vinous Spirits from Fermented Liquors Not to mention Abundance of other Preparations which Arnoldus de Villa Nova Raymund Lully his Scholar and F. Bacon learned from them I will not deny but some Chymical Experiments were very anciently known Solomon hints at the Disagreement of Vinegar and Nitre which though not intelligible of common Nitre yet as Mr. Boyle found by his own Experience it is certainly true of Egyptian Nitre which as being a natural Alkali will cause an Ebullition when joined with any Acid Salt The Property of Mercury to mix or as the Chymists speak to Amalgamate with Gold was known in Vitruvius's Time Though by that one may perceive that very few of its other Properties were then known since Pliny who mentions that Quality of Mercury that it will Amalgamate with Gold speaks of it as a singular Thing in these Words Every Thing swims upon Quick-Silver but Gold that only it draws to it self Whereas now every Body knows that Mercury will Amalgamate with all Metals but Copper and Iron And if the Ancients Skill in Minerals may be judged of by Pliny's Accounts they believed that Lead was heavier and more ductile than Gold Some Passages likewise are produced by Borrichius to prove that the Ancients understood something of Calcinations and the Use of Lixiviate Salts But these Things are very few very imperfect and occasional Chymistry was not esteemed as a distinct Art or the Analyses thereby produced worthy a Philosopher's Notice though the Industry of later Ages have found them to be so regular and remarkable that many Persons have thought that the Constituent Principles of Mixed Bodies are no other Way so certainly to be found out Hence have the Hypotheses of the Paracelsians taken their Beginning who held that Salt Sulphur and Mercury were the active Principles of Composition of all Mixed Bodies Hence several others have been led to believe that the Primary Constituents of very many Bodies were Acid and Alkalizate Salts Which Hypotheses though liable to many Exceptions as Mr. Boyle has fully proved are founded upon such a Variety of surprizing Experiments that those who first started them were not so unadvised as one that is wholly unacquainted with the Laboratories of the Chymists might at first View suspect For it is certain that five distinct and tolerably uniform Substances may be drawn from most Vegetable and Animal Substances by Fire namely Phlegm Fixed Salt Oil Earth and Spirit or Volatile Salt dissolved in Phlegm So that here is a new Field of Knowledge of which the Ancients had no sort of Notion The great and successful Change hereby made in the Pharmaceutical Part of Physick shews that these Philosophers by Fire have spent their Time to very good purpose Those Physicians who reason upon Galenical Principles acknowledge that in very many Cases the Tinctures Extracts Spirits Volatile Salts and Rosins of Vegetables and Animals are much more efficacious Remedies than the Galenical Preparations of those self-same Medicines Nay though they are not easily reconciled to Mineral Preparations because the Ancients not knowing how to separate them from their grosser Faeces durst very seldom apply them to any but Chirurgical Uses yet they themselves are forced to own that some Diseases are of so malignant a Nature that they cannot be dispelled by milder Methods The Use of Mercury in Venereal Distempers is so great and so certain that if there be such a Thing as a Specifical Remedy in Nature it may justly deserve that Title The Unskilfulness of those who have prepared and administred Antimonial Medicines has made them infamous with many Persons though many admirable Cures have been and are wrought by them skilfully corrected every Day And it is well known that the inward Use of Steel has been so successful that in many Diseases where the nicest Remedies seem requisite whether the Constitution of the Patients or the Nature of the Distempers be considered it is without Fear made use of tho' its Medicinal Virtues in these Cases have been found out by Chymical Methods Upon the whole Matter it is certain that here is a new and gainful Acquisition made The old Galenical Materia Medica is almost as well known in all probability as ever it was since there are so great Numbers of Receipts preserved in the Writings of the old Physicians The Industry of Modern Naturalists has in most at least in all material Cases clearly discovered what those Individual Remedies are which are there described So that whatsoever Enlargement is made is a clear Addition especially since these Minerals and Metals were then as free and common as they are now Besides vast Numbers of Galenical Medicines Chymically prepared are less nauseous and equally powerful which is so great an Advantage to Physick that it ought not to be over-looked CHAP. XVII Of Ancient and Modern Anatomy ANatomy is one of the most necessary Arts to open to us Natural Knowledge of any that was ever thought of It s Usefulness to Physicians was very early seen and the Greeks took great Pains to bring it to Perfection Some of the first Dissectors tried their Skill upon living Bodies of Men as well as Brutes This was so inhumane and barbarous a Custom that it was soon left off And it created such an Abhorrence in Mens Minds of the Art it self that in Galen's Time even dead Bodies were seldom opened and he was often obliged to use Apes instead of Men which sometimes led him into great Mistakes It may be said perhaps that because there is not an ancient System of Anatomy extant therefore the Extent of their Knowledge in this particular cannot be known But the numerous Anatomical Treatises of Galen do abundantly supply that Defect In his elaborate Work of the Uses of the Parts of Humane Bodies he gives so full an Idea of ancient Anatomy that if no other ancient Book of Anatomy were extant it alone would be sufficient for this purpose He is very large in all his Writings of this Kind in taking Notice of the Opinions of the Anatomists that were ancienter than himself especially when they were mistaken and had spent much Time and Pains in opening Bodies of Brutes of which he somewhere promises to write a comparative Anatomy So that his Books not only acquaint us with his own Opinions but also with the Reasonings and Discoveries of Hippocrates Aristotle Herophilus and Erasistratus whose Names were justly venerable for their Skill in these things Besides he never contradicts any Body without appealing to Experience wherein though he was now and then mistaken yet he does not write like a Pedant affirming a thing to be true or false upon the Credit of Hippocrates or Herophilus but builds his Argument upon Nature as far as he knew her He had an excellent Understanding and a very piercing Genius so that the false uses which he very frequently assigns to several Parts do
receiving Blood from the Heart and going from it Which also was the constant Way of Speaking of Galen and all the Ancients Now no Man that can express himself properly will ever say That any Liquors are carried away from any Cistern as from a Fountain or Source through those Canals which to his Knowledge convey Liquors to that Cistern 4. Hippocrates says the Blood is carried into the Lungs from the Heart for the Nourishment of the Lungs without assigning any other Reason These seem to be positive Arguments that Hippocrates knew nothing of this Matter and accordingly all his Commentators Ancient and Modern before Dr. Harvey never interpreted the former Passages of the Circulation of the Blood Neither would Vander Linden in all probability if Dr. Harvey had not helped him to the Notion which he was then resolved to find in Hippocrates whom he supposed not the Father only but the Finisher also of the whole Medical Art It is pretended to by none of the Ancients or rather their Admirers for them after Hippocrates As for Galen any Man that reads what he says of the Heart and Lungs in the 6th Book of his De Usu Partium must own that he does not discourse as if he were acquainted with Modern Discoveries and therefore it is not so much as pretended that he knew this Recurrent Motion of the Blood Which also further shews that if Hippocrates did know it he explained himself so obscurely that Galen could not understand him who in all probability understood Hippocrates's Text as well as any of his Commentators who have written since the Greek Tongue and much more since the Ionic Dialect has ceased to be a living Language Since the Ancients have no Right to so noble a Discovery it may be worth while to enquire to whom of the Moderns the Glory of it is due for this is also exceedingly contested The first Step that was made towards it was the finding that the whole Mass of the Blood passes through the Lungs by the Pulmonary Artery and Vein The first that I could ever find who had a distinct Idea of this Matter was Michael Servetus a Spanish Physician who was burnt for Arianism at Geneva near 140 Years ago Well had it been for the Church of Christ if he had wholly confined himself to his own Profession His Sagacity in this Particular before so much in the dark gives us great Reason to believe that the World might then have had just Cause to have blessed his Memory In a Book of his intituled Christianismi Restitutio printed in the Year MDLIII he clearly asserts that the Blood passes through the Lungs from the Left to the Right Ventricle of the Heart and not through the Partition which divides the two Ventricles as was at that Time commonly believed How he introduces it or in which of the Six Discourses into which Servetus divides his Book it is to be found I know not having never seen the Book my self Mr. Charles Bernard a very learned and eminent Chirurgeon of London who did me the Favour to communicate this Passage to me set down at length in the Margin which was transcribed out of Servetus could inform me no further only that he had it from a learned Friend of his who had himself copied it from Servetus Realdus Columbus of Cremona was the next that said any thing of it in his Anatomy printed at Venice 1559. in Folio and at Paris in 1572. in Octavo and afterwards elsewhere There he asserts the same Circulation through the Lungs that Servetus had done before but says that no Man had ever taken notice of it before him or had written any Thing about it Which shews that he did not copy from Servetus unless one should say that he stole the Notion without mentioning Servetus's Name which is injurious since in these Matters the same Thing may be and very often is observed by several Persons who never acquainted each other with their Discoveries But Columbus is much more particular for he says That the Veins lodge the whole Mass of the Blood in the Vena Cava which carries it into the Heart whence it cannot return the same Way that it went from the Right Ventricle it is thrown into the Lungs by the Pulmonary Artery where the Valves are so placed as to hinder its Return that Way into the Heart and so it is thrown into the Left Ventricle and by the Aorta again when enliven'd by the Air diffused through the whole Body Some Years after appeared Andreas Caesalpinus who printed his Peripatetical Questions at Venice in Quarto in 1571. And afterwards with his Medical Questions at the same Place in 1593. He is rather more particular than Columbus especially in examining how Arteries and Veins joyn at their Extremities which he supposes to be by opening their Mouths into each other And he uses the Word Circulation in his Peripatetical Questions which had never been used in that Sence before He also takes notice that the Blood swells below the Ligature in veins and urges that in Confirmation of his Opinion At last Dr. William Harvey printed a Discourse on purpose upon this Subject at Francfort in 1628. This Notion had only been occasionally and slightly treated of by Columbus and Caesalpinus who themselves in all probability did not know the Consequence of what they asserted and therefore it was never applied to other Purposes either to shew the Uses of the other Viscera or to explain the Natures of Diseases Neither for any Thing that appears at this Day had they made any Numbers of Experiments which were necessary to explain their Doctrine and to clear it from Opposition All this Dr. Harvey undertook to do and with indefatigable Pains traced the visible Veins and Arteries throughout the Body in their whole Journey from and to the Heart so as to demonstrate even to the most incredulous not only that the Blood circulates through the Lungs and Heart but the very Manner how and the Time in which that great Work is performed When he had once proved that the Motion of the Blood was so rapid as we now find it is then he drew such Consequences from it as shewed that he throughly understood his Argument and would leave little at least as little as he could to future Industry to discover in that particular Part of Anatomy This gave him a just Title to the Honour of so noble a Discovery since what his Predecessors had said before him was not enough understood to form just Notions from their Words One may also observe how gradually this Discovery as all abstruse Truths of Humane Disquisition was explained to the World Hippocrates first talked of the Usual Motion of the Blood Plato said That the Heart was the Original of the Veins and of the Blood that was carried about every Member of the Body Aristotle also somewhere speaks of a Recurrent Motion of the Blood Still all this was only Opinion and Belief It
Harvey's Time Not one of these Discoveries has ever shown a single Instance of any Artery going to or of any Vein coming from the Heart Ligatures have been made of infinite Numbers of Vessels and the Course of all the Animal Juices in all manner of living Creatures has thereby been made visible to the naked Eye and yet not one of these has ever weakned Dr. Harvey's Doctrine The Pleasure of Destroying in Matters of this Kind is not much less than the Pleasure of Building And therefore when we see that those Books which have been written against some of the eminentest of these Discoveries though but a few Years ago comparatively speaking are so far dead that it is already become a Piece of Learning even to know their Titles we have sufficient Assurance that these Discoverers whose Writings out-live Opposition neither deceive themselves nor others So that whatsoever it might be formerly yet in this Age general Consent in Physiological Matters especially after a long Canvass of the Things consented to is an almost infallible Sign of Truth 3. The more Ways are made use of to arrive at any one particular Part of Knowledge the surer that Knowledge is when it appears that these different Methods lend Help each to other If Malpighius's or Leeuwenhoek's Glasses had made such Discoveries as Men's Reason could not have agreed to if Objects had appeared confused and disorderly in their Microscopes if their Observations had contradicted what the naked Eye reveals then their Verdict had been little worth But when the Discoveries made by the Knife and the Microscope disagree only as Twi-light and Noon-day then a Man is satisfied that the Knowledge which each affords to us differs only in Degree not in Sort. 4. It can signifie nothing in the present Controversie to pretend that Books are lost or to say that for ought we know Herophilus might anciently have made this Discovery or Erasistratus that their Reasonings demonstrate the Extent of their Knowledge as convincingly as if we had a Thousand old Systems of Ancient Anatomy extant 5. In judging of Modern Discoveries one is nicely to distinguish between Hypothesis and Theory The Anatomy of the Nerves holds good whether the Nerves carry a Nutritious Juice to the several Parts of the Body or no. The Pancreas sends a Juice into the Duodenum which mixes there with the Bile let the Nature of that Juice be what it will Yet here a nice Judge may observe that every Discovery has mended the Hypotheses of the Modern Anatomists and so it will always do till the Theories of every Part and every Juice be as entire as Experiments and Observations can make them As these Discoveries have made the Frame of our own Bodies a much more intelligible Thing than it was before though there is yet a great deal unknown so the same Discoveries having been applied to and found in almost all sorts of known Animals have made the Anatomy of Brutes Birds Fishes and Insects much more perfect than it could possibly be in former Ages Most of the Rules which Galen lays down in his Anatomical Administrations are concerning the Dissection of Apes If he had been now to write besides those tedious Advices how to part the Muscles from the Membranes and to observe their several Insertions and Originations the Jointings of the Bones and the like he would have taught the World how to make Ligatures of all sorts of Vessels in their proper Places what Liquors had been most convenient to make Injections with thereby to discern the Courses of Veins Arteries Chyle-Vessels or Lympheducts how to unravel the Testicles how to use Microscopes to the best Advantage He would have taught his Disciples when and where to look for such and such Vessels or Glands where Chymical Trials were useful and what the Processes were by which he made his Experiments or found out his Theories Which Things fill up every Page in the Writings of later Dissectors This he would have done as well as what he did had these Ways of making Anatomical Discoveries been then known and practised The World might then have expected such Anatomies of Brutes as Dr. Tyson has given of the Rattle-Snake or Dr. Moulin of the Elephant Such Dissections of Fishes as Dr. Tyson's of the Porpesse and Steno's of the Shark Such of Insects as Malpighius's of a Silk-Worm Swammerdam's of the Ephemeron Dr. Lister's of a Snail and the same Dr. Tyson's of Long and Round Body-Worms All which shew Skill and Industry not conceivable by a Man that is not a little versed in these Matters To this Anatomy of Bodies that have Sensitive Life we ought to add the Anatomy of Vegetables begun and brought to great Perfection in Italy and England at the same Time by Malpighius and Dr. Grew By their Glasses they have been able to give an Account of the different Textures of all the Parts of Trees Shrubs and Herbs to trace the several Vessels which carry Air Lympha Milk Rosin and Turpentine in those Plants which afford them to describe the whole Process of Vegetation from Seed to Seed and in a Word though they have left a great deal to be admired because it was to them incomprehensible yet they have discovered a great deal to be admired because of its being known by their Means CHAP. XX. Of Ancient and Modern Natural Histories of Elementary Bodies and Minerals HAving now finished my Comparison of Ancient and Modern Anatomy with as much Exactness as my little Insight into these Things would give me Leave I am sensible that most Men will think that I have been too tedious But besides that I had not any where found it carefully done to my Hands though it is probable that it has in Books which have escaped my Notice I thought that it would be a very effectual Instance how little the Ancients may have been presumed to have perfected any one Part of Natural Knowledge when their own Bodies which they carried about with them and which of any Thing they were the nearliest concerned to know were comparatively speaking so very imperfectly traced However in the remaining Parts of my Parallel I shall be much shorter which I hope may be some Amends for my too great Length in this From those Instruments or Mechanical Arts whether Ancient or Modern by which Knowledge has been advanced I am now to go to the Knowledge it self According to the Method already proposed I am to begin with Natural History in its usual Acceptation as it takes in the Knowledge of the several Kinds of Elementary Bodies Minerals Insects Plants Beasts Birds and Fishes The Usefulness and the Pleasure of this Part of Learning is too well known to need any Proof And besides it is a Study about which the greatest Men of all Ages have employed themselves Of the very few lost Books that are mentioned in the Old Testament one was an History of Plants written by the wisest of Men and he a King So that there is
Reflections relating to the following Chapters With an Account of Sir William Temple 's Hypothesis of the History of Learning p. 77 Chap. 8. Of the Learning of Pythagoras and the most Ancient Philosophers of Greece p. 91 Chap. 9. Of the History and Mathematicks of the Ancient Egyptians p. 103 Chap. 10. Of the Natural Philosophy Medicine and Alchemy of the Ancient Egyptians p. 116 Chap. 11. Of the Learning of the Ancient Chaldeans and Arabians p. 136 Chap. 12. Of the Learning of the Chineses p. 144 Chap. 13. Of the Logick and Metaphysicks of the Ancient Greeks p. 154 Chap. 14. Of Ancient and Modern Geometry and Arithmetick p. 159 Chap. 15. Of several Instruments invented by the Moderns which have helped to advance Learning p. 169 Chap. 16. Of Ancient and Modern Chymistry p. 183 Chap. 17. Of Ancient and Modern Anatomy p. 190 Chap. 18. Of the Circulation of the Blood p. 206 Chap. 19. Further Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Anatomy p. 218 Chap. 20. Of Ancient and Modern Natural Histories of Elementary Bodies and Minerals p. 238 Chap. 21. Of Ancient and Modern Histories of Plants p. 252 Chap. 22. Of Ancient and Modern Histories of Animals p. 263 Chap. 23. Of Ancient and Modern Astronomy and Opticks p. 275 Chap. 24. Of Ancient and Modern Musick p. 282 Chap. 25. Of Ancient and Modern Physick p. 289 Chap. 26. Of Ancient and Modern Natural Philosophy p. 299 Chap. 27. Of the Philological Learning of the Moderns p. 310 Chap. 28. Of the Theological Learning of the Moderns p. 322 Chap. 29. Reflections upon the Reasons of the Decay of Modern Learning assigned by Sir William Temple p. 342 ADVERTISEMENT ☞ THE Reader is desired to take Notice that the Second Edition of Sir William Temple's Essay is quoted every where in this Book but that all the Citations are also to be found in the Third Edition which was Corrected and Enlarged by the Author ERRATA PAg. 90. lin 5. r. Accounts p. 94 95. r. Van Dalen p. 122. l. 5. r. exurere p. 145. l. ult for Mechanicks r. Mathematicks p. 146. l. 3. r. Verbiest p. 164. l. 26. r. Van Heuraet p. 176. l. 24. r. Limb. p. 280. l. 22. r. Ellipse p. 271. l. 3. r. could p. 312. l. 2. r. when we p. 314. l. 26. for Letter r. Discourse p. 315. l. 13. for it is r. they are REFLECTIONS UPON Ancient and Modern LEARNING CHAP. 1. General Reflections upon the State of the Question THE present State of the Designs and Studies of Mankind is so very different from what it was 150 Years ago that it is no Wonder if Men's Notions concerning them vary as much as the Things themselves This great Difference arises from the Desire which every Man has who believes that he can do greater Things than his Neighbours of letting them see how much he does excel them This will oblige him to omit no Opportunity that offers it self to do it and afterwards to express his Satisfaction that he has done it This is not only visible in particular Persons but in the several Ages of Mankind which are only Communities of particular Persons living at the same time as often as their Humours or their Interests lead them to pursue the same Methods This Emulation equally shews it self whatsoever the Subject be about which it is employed whether it be about Matters of Trade or War or Learning it is all one One Nation will strive to out-do another and so will one Age too when several Nations agree in the pursuit of the same Design only the Jealousie is not so great in the Contest for Learning as it is in that for Riches and Power because these are Things which every several People strive to ingross all to themselves so that it is impossible for bordering Nations to suffer with any Patience that their Neighbours should grow as great as they in either of them to their own prejudice though they will all agree in raising the Credit of the Age they live in upon that Account that being the only Thing wherein their Interests do perfectly unite If this Way of Reasoning will bold it may be asked how it comes to pass that the Learned Men of the last Age did not pretend that they out-did the Ancients as well as some do now They would without question could they have had any Colour for it It was the Work of one Age to remove the Rubbish and to clear the Way for future Inventors Men seldom strive for Mastery where the Superiority is not in some sort disputable then it is that they begin to strive accordingly as soon as there was a fair Pretence for such a Dispute there were not wanting those who soon made the most of it both by exalting their own Performances and disparaging every Thing that had been done of that kind by their Predecessors 'Till the new Philosophy had gotten Ground in the World this was done very sparingly which is but within the Compass of 40 or 50 Years There were but few before who would be thought to have exceeded the Ancients unless it were some few Physicians who set up Chymical Methods of Practice and Theories of Diseases founded upon Chymical Notions in opposition to the Galenical But these Men for want of conversing much out of their own Laboratories were unable to maintain their Cause to the general Conviction of Mankind The Credit of the Cures which they wrought not supporting them enough against the Reasonings of their Adversaries Soon after the Restauration of King Charles II. upon the Institution of the Royal Society the Comparative Excellency of the Old and New Philosophy was eagerly debated in England But the Disputes then managed between Stubbe and Glanvile were rather Personal relating to the Royal Society than General relating to Knowledge in its utmost extent In France this Controversie has been taken up more at large The French were not satisfied to argue the Point in Philosophy and Mathematicks but even in Poetry and Oratory too where the Ancients had the general Prejudice of the Learned on their Side Monsieur de Fontenelle the celebrated Author of a Book concerning the Plurality of Worlds begun the Dispute about six Years ago in a little Discourse annexed to his Pastorals He is something shy in declaring his Mind at least in arraigning the Ancients whose Reputations were already established though it is plain he would be understood to give the Moderns the Preference in Poetry and Oratory as well as in Philosophy and Mathematicks His Book being received with great Applause it was opposed in England by Sir William Temple who in the Second Part of his Miscellanea has printed an Essay upon this very Subject Had Monsieur de Fontenelle's Discourse passed unquestioned it would have been very strange since there never was a new Notion started in the World but some were found who did as eagerly contradict it The Opinion which Sir William Temple appears for is received by so great a Number of
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
themselves that there is a particular Nerve that goes from the Heart to the little Finger of the Left-Hand for which Reason they always wore Rings upon that Finger and the Priests dipped that Finger in their perfumed Ointments this being ridiculed by Conringius Borrichius assures us that he always found something to countenance this Observation upon cutting of his Nails to the quick Pliny in the 37 th Chapter of the 11 th Book of his Natural History and Censorinus in the 17 th Chapter of his little Book De Die Natali give this following Reason from Dioscorides the Astrologer why a Man cannot live above a Hundred Years because the Alexandrian Embalmers observed a constant Increase and Diminution of Weight of the Hearts of those sound Persons whom they opened whereby they judged of their Age. They found that the Hearts of Infants of a Year old weighed two Drachms and this Weight encreased Annually by two Drachms every Year till Men came to the Age of Fifty Years At which Time they as gradually decreased till they came to an Hundred when for want of a Heart they must necessarily die To these two Instances of the Criticalness of Egyptian Anatomy I shall add one of their Curiosities in Natural Enquiries and that is their Knowledge of the Cause of the Annual Overflowing of the Nile This which was the constant Wonder of the Old World was a Phaenomenon seldom over-looked by the Greek Philosophers Seven of whose Opinions are reckoned up by Plutarch in the First Chapter of the Fourth Book of his Opinions of the Philosophers If Curiosity generally attends a Desire of Knowledge and grows along with it then the Egyptian Priests were inexcusably negligent that they did not know that the swelling of the Nile proceeded from the Rains that fell in Ethiopia which raising the River at certain Seasons made that overflowing of the Flats of Egypt One would think that in Sesostris's Time the Egyptian Priests had Access enough into Ethiopia and whoever had once been in that Country could have resolved that Problem without any Philosophy It was known indeed in Plato's Time for then the Priests told it to Eudoxus but Thales Democritus and Herodotus who had all enquired of the Egyptians give such uncouth Reasons as shew that they only spoke by guess Thales thinks that the Etesian Winds blew at that Time of the Year against the Mouths of the River so that the fresh Water finding no Vent was beaten back upon the Land Democritus supposes that the Northern Snows being melted by the Summer Heats are drawn up in Vapours into the Air which Vapours circulating towards the South are by the Coldness of the Etesian Winds condensed into Rain by which the Nile is raised Herodotus thinks that an equal Quantity of Water comes from the Fountains in Summer and Winter only in Summer there are greater Quantities of Water drawn up by the Sun and in Winter less and so by Consequence all that Time it overflowed Democritus's Opinion of the Phaenomenon seems not amiss though his Hypothesis of the Cause of it is wrong in all Probability Yet it is plain That Plutarch did not believe it to be the same with that which the Egyptian Priests gave to Eudoxus which is the only true one because he sets them both down apart The Cause of this wonderful Phaenomenon could not be pretended to be a Secret no Honour could be got by concealing a thing the pretended Ignorance whereof was rather a Disgrace Those Egyptian Priests whose Business it was to gather Knowledge must have had an extraordinary Love for a sedentary Life or have been averse to inform themselves from others more than the rest of Mankind who would not be at the Pains either to learn what Sesostris's Soldiers could have told them or to go about Two Hundred Miles Southward to search for that which they must certainly have often reasoned about if they were such Philosophers as they pretended to be Nay by the Curiosity of the Greeks we are sure they did reason about it they thought it as much a Wonder as we can do now Rather more because they knew of no other Rivers that overflow at periodical Seasons like it as some are now known to do in the East-Indies Upon the whole Matter after a particular Search into the whole Extent of Egyptian Learning there seems to be no Reason to give the Egyptians the Preeminence in point of Knowledge above all Mankind However considering the great Labour which is requisite to form the First Notions of any part of Learning they deserve great Applause for what they discovered and ought to have proportionable Grains of Allowance for what they left unfinished So that when the Holy Scriptures assure us that Moses was skilled in all the Learning of the Egyptians they give him the greatest Character for humane Knowledge that could then be given to any Man The Egyptian Performances in Architecture were very wonderful and the Character which Hadrian the Emperour gives them that they found Employments for all Sorts of Persons the Blind the Lame the Gouty as well as the strong and healthy shews that it was natural to the Egyptians to be always busied about something useful The Art of Brewing Mault-drinks was very anciently ascribed to the Egyptians as the first Inventors for which these Northern Nations are not a little beholding to them Their Laws have by those who have taken the greatest Pains to destroy the Reputation of their Learning in other things been acknowledged to be very wise and worth going so far as Pythagoras Solon and Lycurgus did to fetch them So that if Sir William Temple had extolled their Learning with any other Design than that of disparaging the Knowledge of the present Age there would have been no Reason to oppose his Assertions CHAP. XI Of the Learning of the Ancient Chaldeans and Arabians THE Chaldeans and the Arabs are the People that lie next in Sir William Temple's Road. We may pronounce with some Certainty 1. That the Chaldean Astronomy could not be very valuable since as we know from Vitruvius and others they had not discovered that the Moon is an Opake Body Whether their Astronomical Observations were older than their Monarchy is uncertain If they were not then in Alexander the Great 's Time they could not challenge an Antiquity of above Five or Six Hundred Years I mention Alexander because he is said to have sent vast Numbers of Observations from Babylon to his Master Aristotle The Assyrian Monarchy of which the Chaldean might not improperly be called a Branch pretends indeed to great Antiquity Great Things are told of Ninus and Semiramis who is more than once mentioned by Sir William Temple in these Essays for her Victories and her Skill in Gardening but these Accounts are very probably fabulous for the following Reasons Till the Time of Tiglath-Pileser and Pul we hear no News of any Assyrian Monarchs in the Jewish History In Amraphel's
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
in a great Measure by Telescopes whose chief Use that comes under our Consideration is to discern the Stars and other celestial Bodies To find out the first Inventor of these sorts of Glasses it will be necessary to learn who first found out the Properties of Convex and Concave Glasses in the Refraction of Light Dr. Plot has collected a great deal concerning F. Bacon in his Natural History of Oxfordshire which seems to put it out of doubt that he knew that great Objects might appear little and small Objects appear great that distant Objects would seem near and near Objects seem afar off by different Applications of Convex and Concave Glasses upon the Credit of which Authorities Mr. Molineux attributes the Invention of Spectacles to this learned Friar the Time to which their earliest Use may be traced agreeing very well with the Time in which he lived but how far F. Bacon went we know not So that we must go into Holland for the first Inventors of these excellent Instruments and there they were first found out by one Zacharias Joannides a Spectacle-maker of Middleburgh in Zeland in 1590 he presented a Tellescope of Two Glasses to Prince Maurice and another to Arch-Duke Albert the former of whom apprehending that they might be of great Use in War desired him to conceal his Secret For this Reason his Name was so little known that neither Des Cartes nor Gerhard Vossius had ever heard any thing of him when they attributed the Invention of Telescopes to Jacobus Metius of Alkmaer However it taking Air Galileo Galilei took the Hint and made several Telescopes by which making Observations upon heavenly Bodies he got himself immortal Honour Thereby he discovered Four Planets moving constantly round Jupiter from thence usually called his Satellits which afterwards were observed to have a constant regular and periodical Motion This Motion is now so exactly known that Mr. Flamstead who is one of the most accurate Observers that ever was has been able to calculate Tables of the Eclipses of the several Satellits according to which Astronomers in different quarters of the World having Notice of the precise Time when to look for them have found them to answer to his Predictions and published their Observations accordingly This is an effectual Answer to all that Rhapsody which Stubbe has collected in his Brutal Answer to Mr. Glanvile's Plus Ultra about the Uncertainty of all Observations made by Telescopes since it is impossible to calculate the Duration of any Motion justly by fallacious and uncertain Methods By the Eclipses of Jupiter's Satellits Longitudes would soon be exactly determined if Tubes of any Length could be managed at Sea But Jupiter is not the only Planet about which things anciently unknown have been revealed by this noble Instrument The Moon has been discovered to be an Earth endued with a libratory Motion of an uneven Surface which has something analogous to Hills and Dales Plains and Seas and a â—â—ew Geography if one may use that Word without a Blunder with accurate Maps has been published by the great Hevelius and improved by Ricciolus by which Eclipses may be observed much more nicely than could be done formerly The Sun has been found to have Spots at some times the Planets to move round their Axes Saturn to have a Luminous Ring round about his Body which in some Positions appears like two Handles as they are commonly called or large Prominencies on opposite Parts of his Limbs carried along with him beside Five Planets moving periodically about him as those others do about Jupiter The milky Way to be a Cluster of numberless Stars the other parts of the Heaven to be filled with an incredible Number of fixed Stars of which if Hevelius's Globes are ever published the World may hope to see a Catalogue These are some of the remarkable Discoveries that have been made by Telescopes And as new Things have been revealed so old ones have been much more nicely observed than formerly it was possible to observe them But I need not enlarge upon particular Proofs of that which every Astronomical Book printed within these Fifty Years is full of If I should it would be said perhaps that I had only copied from the French Author of the Plurality of Worlds so often mentioned already As some Things are too far off so others are too small to be seen without help This last Defect is admirably supplied by Microscopes invented by the same Zacharias Joannides which besides Miscellaneous and Occasional Observations have been applied to Anatomy by Malpighius Leeuwenhoeck Grew Havers and several others The first very considerable Essay to shew what might be discovered in Nature by the help of Microscopes was made by Dr. Hook in his Micrography wherein he made various Observations upon very different Sorts of Bodies One may easily imagine what Light they must needs give unto the nicer Mechanism of most Kinds of Bodies when Monsieur Leeuwenhoeck has plainly proved that he could with his Glasses discern Bodies several Millions of Times less than a Grain of Sand. This may be relied upon because Dr. Hook who examined what Leeuwenhoeck says of the little Animals which he discerned in Water of which he tells the most wonderful Things does in his Microscopium attest the Truth of Leeuwenhoeck's Observations Besides these which are of more universal Use several other Instruments have been invented which have been very serviceable to find out the Properties of Natural Bodies and by which several Things of very great Moment utterly unknown to the Ancients have been detected As 1. The Thermometer invented by Sanctorius an eminent Physician of Padua It s immediate Use is to determine the several Degrees of Heat and Cold of which our Senses can give us but uncertain Notices because they do not so much inform us of the State of the Air in it self as what its Operations are at that Time upon our Bodies But Sanctorius used only open Vessels which are of small Use since Liquors may rise or fall in the Tubes as well from the Increase or Diminution of the Weight of the Air as of Heat and Cold. That Defect was remedied by Mr. Boyle who sealed up the Liquors in the Tubes Hermetically that so nothing but only Heat and Cold might have any Operation upon them The Uses to which they have been applied may be seen at large in Mr. Boyle's History of Cold and the Experiments of the Academy del Cimento 2. The Baroscope or Torricellian Experiment so called from its Inventor Evangelista Torricelli a Florentine Mathematician who about the Year 1643. found that Quick-Silver would stand erect in a Tube above 28 Inches from the Surface of other Quick-Silver into which the Tube was immersed if it was before well purged of Air. This noble Experiment soon convinced the World that the Air is an actually heavy Body and gravitates upon every Thing here below This
was formerly as well known as now In their Observations about Bees the Ancients were very curious Pliny mentions one Aristomachus who spent Fifty Eight Years in observing them And it is very evident from him Aristotle and Aelian that as far as they could make their Observations the Ancients did not neglect to digest necessary Materials for the Natural History of this wonderful and useful Insect They were so particularly careful to collect what they could gather concerning it that it is to be feared a very great Part of what they say is fabulous But if they were curious to collect Materials for the History of this single Insect they were in the main as negligent about the rest They had indeed Names for general Sorts of most of them and they took notice of some though but few remarkable Sub-divisions The Extent of their Knowledge in this Particular has been nicely shewn by Aldrovandus and Moufet In their Writings one may see that the Ancients knew nothing of many Sorts and of those which they mention they give very indifferent Descriptions contenting themselves with such Accounts as might perhaps refresh the Memories of those who knew them before but which could signifie very little to those who had never seen them But of their Generation or Anatomy they could know nothing considerable since those Things are in a great Measure owing to Observations made by Microscopes and having observed few Sub-divisions they could say little to the Ranging of those Insects which they knew already by distinct Characteristicks under several Heads For want of observing the several Steps of Nature in all their Mutations and taking notice of the Sagacity of many sorts of Insects in providing convenient Lodgings for themselves and fit Harbours for their young ones both for Shelter and Food they often took those to be different which were only the same Species at different Seasons and those to be near of Kin which only Chance not an Identity of Nature brought together The Clearing of all these Things is owing to Modern Industry since the Time that Sir William Temple has set as a Period of the Advancement of Modern Knowledge even within these last Forty Years It lies for the most part in a very few Hands and so is the more easily traced In Italy Malpighius and Rhedi took several Parts Rhedi examined very many general Sorts those Insects especially which are believed to be produced from the Putrefaction of Flesh Those he found to grow from Eggs laid by other grown Insects of the same Kinds But he could not trace the Origination of those which are found upon Leaves Branches Flowers and Roots of Trees The Generation of those was nicely examined by Malpighius in his curious Discourse of Galls which is in the 2d Part of his Anatomy of Plants wherein he has sufficiently shewn that those Excrescencies and Swellings which appear in Summer upon the Leaves tender Twigs Fruits and Roots of many Trees Shrubs and Herbs from whence several sorts of Insects spring are all caused by Eggs laid there by full grown Insects of their own Kinds for which Nature has kindly provided that secure Harbour till they are able to come forth and take Care of themselves But Rhedi has gone further yet and has made many Observations upon Insects that live and are carried about on the Bodies of other Insects His Observations have not been weakned by Monsieur Leeuwenhoek whose Glasses which are said to excel any ever yet used by other People shewed him the same Animals that Monsieur Rhedi had discovered already and innumerable sorts of others never yet thought of Besides Monsieur Leeuwenhoek there have been two very eminent Men in Holland for this Business Goedartius and Swammerdam Goedartius who was no Philosopher but one who for his Diversion took great Delight in painting all sorts of Insects has given very exact Histories of the several Changes of Caterpillars into Butter-Flies and Worms or Maggots into Flies which had never before been taken notice of as specifically different These Changes had long before been observed in Caterpillars and Maggots by Aristotle Theophrastus and Pliny But they who did in a manner all that has been done in this Matter by the Ancients content themselves with general Things They enter not into Minute Enquiries about the several Species of these Animals which are very numerous They do not state the Times of their several Changes So that these Matters being left untouched we have an admirable Specimen of the Modern Advancement of Knowledge in Goedartius's Papers Still an Anatomical Solution of these Appearances was wholly unknown What Ovid says of the Metamorphoses of Insects is suitable enough to the Design of his Poem And there we may well allow such a Natural Change of Caterpillars into Butter-Flies as is not to be accounted for by the Regular Laws of Growth and Augmentation of Natural Bodies But a Natural Historian has no need of the Fictions of a Poet. These Difficulties therefore were cleared by Swammerdam who in his General History of Insects proves that all the Parts of the full-grown Insect which first appears in a different Form from what it assumes afterwards were actually existent in the Foetus which creeps about as a Caterpillar or a Maggot till the Wings Horns and Feet which are inclosed in fine Membranes come to their full Growth at which Time that Membrane which at first was only visible dries up and breaks out of which comes forth the Insect proper to that Kind which then gendring with its like lays such Eggs as in a seasonable Time are hatched that so the Species which is not generated by Chance may always be preserved In England Dr. Lister has done the most to compleat this Part of Natural History His Book of Spiders gives an Account of very many Species of those Animals formerly unobserved His Latin and English Editions of Goedartius have not only made that Author more intelligible by ranging his confused Observations under certain Heads conformable to Nature which may serve also as Foundations to enlarge upon as more Species shall hereafter be discovered but also have given him an Opportunity of saying many new Things pertinent to that Subject all tending to increase our Knowledge of those small Productions of the Divine Mechanicks And his Discourse of Snails lately printed has shewn several very curious Things in that wonderful Tribe of Animals which though observed above Thirty Years ago by Mr. Ray yet had not been much believed because not sufficiently illustrated by some able Anatomist This is what our Age has seen and it is not the less admirable because it cannot be made immediately useful to humane Life It is an excellent Argument to prove That it is not Gain alone which biasses the Pursuits of the Men of this Age after Knowledge for here are numerous Instances of Learned Men who finding other Parts of Natural Learning taken up by Men who in all Probability would leave
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
Sidonius Apollinaris knew the State of Demosthenes's Time so well yet these also are Ancients to us and have left behind them Writings of a very estimable Value Literary Commerce was anciently not so frequent as now it is though the Roman Empire made it more easie than otherwise it could have been In Ecclesiastical Antiquity this can be more fully proved than it can in Civil because Monuments of that Kind are more numerous and have been better preserved How widely were the Greek Writers many times mistaken when they gave an Account of the Affairs of the Latin Churches And how very imperfect many Times were the Accounts which the Western Churches had of Things of the greatest Moment that had been determined in the East Though the Council of Nice was Oecumenical yet the African Churches knew so little of its Canons above Fifty Years after it was held that the Bishops of Rome imposed Canons made in another Council held several Years after in another Place upon them as Canons made in the Council of Nice Yet they were all at that Time under one common Government and these Things were acknowledged by all Sides to be of Eternal Concernment The same Negligence if not greater is discernable in Matters which were studied rather as Recreation and Diversion than as necessary Business How many of the Ancients busied themselves about Examining into the Antiquities of several Nations especially after the Old Testament was translated into Greek Yet how few of them understood the Languages of those Countries of which they disputed There were but two of the Ancient Fathers that we know of that pretended to Learning who understood Hebrew accurately Origen and St Hierom And how well St. Hierom understood it is now certainly known not like the Lightfoot's the Buxtorf's the Drusius's and the Cappell's of the present Age one may be very well assured The other Oriental Languages even these Inquisitive Fathers knew very little or nothing of To how good purpose they have been cultivated by the Moderns the Writings of Selden Bochart Pocock and several others do abundantly declare When Pocock and Golius went into the East to bring away their Learning they went to very good purpose indeed The Bodleyan and Leyden-Libraries can witness what vast Heaps of Eastern MSS. have been brought by such Men as these into Europe One would think I were drawing up a Catalogue not writing of a Letter if I should enumerate the Books which have been printed about the Oriental Learning within these last Seventy Years And how much they have enlightned all manner of Antiquity is easie to tell How clearly has the Old Chronology and Geography been stated by Modern Criticks and Philologers and the Mistakes and Carelesness of many Writers detected who were esteemed Authentick even in the Times wherein they lived Selden and Bochart to name no more at present have plainly proved that all the Ancient Greek Antiquaries were not near so well acquainted with the Originals of that Mythology which then made up a good part of their Religion as well as of their Learning as it is known at present since the Languages of those Countries from whence most of those Rites and Stories took their Original have been carefully examined and critically studied Is it not a very odd Thing that of so many as have written of the Pyramids there should not be one exact Account of them Ancient nor Modern till Mr. Greaves described them They were admired formerly as much as now reckoned amongst the Seven Wonders of the World and mentioned from Herodotus's Time downwards by all that gave any Account of Egypt Yet most Men copied after Herodotus and many of the rest who did not spoke by guess None of the extant Ancient Authors was so exact as Sir George Sandys who wanted nothing but Mathematical Skill to have left nothing for Mr. Greaves who came after him to do This is an eminent Instance whereby we may give a certain Judgment of the Historical Exactness of the Ancients compared to that of the Moderns It may be improved to considerable Purposes at least it is of great use to justifie those Modern Writers who have with great Freedom accused some of the Greatest of the Ancients of Carelesness in their Accounts of Civil Occurrencies as well as of Natural Rareties and who have dared to believe their own Reason against the positive Evidence of an old Historian in Matters wherein one would think that he had greater Opportunities of knowing the certain Truth than any Man that has lived for several Ages But here I expect that it should be objected that this is not to be esteemed as a Part of Real Learning To pore in old MSS. to compare various Readings to turn over Glossaries and old Scholia upon Ancient Historians Orators and Poets to be minutely critical in all the little Fashions of the Ancient Greeks and Romans the Memory whereof was in a manner lost within Fifty or an Hundred Years after they had been in use may be good Arguments of a Man's Industry and Willingness to drudge but seem to signifie little to denominate him a great Genius or one who was able to do great Things of himself The Objection is specious enough and the Indiscretions of many Modern Commentators have given but too much Colour for it which has in our Nation especially been riveted in Men's Minds more perhaps than in any other learned Nation in Europe Tho in Enquiries into the remotest Antiquities of the oldest Nations perhaps no People have done near so much as some learned English-Men But this Objection lies chiefly against the Men not the Knowledge the Extent whereof it is only my Business to enquire into and yet even there too it is without Ground for whoever will be at the pains to reflect upon the vast Extent of the various Knowledge which such Men as those I named before had treasured together which they were able to produce to such excellent Purposes in their Writings must confess that their Genius's were little if at all inferiour to their Memories those among them especially who have busied themselves in restoring corrupted Places of Ancient Authors There are Thousands of Corrections and Censures upon Authors to be found in the Annotations of Modern Criticks which required more Fineness of Thought and Happiness of Invention than perhaps Twenty such Volumes as those were upon which these very Criticisms were made For though generally speaking good Copies are absolutely necessary though the Critick himself must have a perfect Command of the Language and particular Stile of his Author must have a clear Idea of the Way and Humour of the Age in which he wrote many of which Things require great Sagacity as well as great Industry yet there is a peculiar Quickness in Discerning what is proper to the Passage then to be corrected in distinguishing all the particular Circumstances necessary to be observed and those perhaps very numerous which raise a judicious Critick very
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
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