Memoirs of the life of David Rittenhouse, LLD. F.R.S., late president of the American Philosophical Society, &c. — Key Ideas to Explore

the end of the fourteenth century, continues the learned Baron, this absurd system arrived to a great height. It became a mere jargon, a confused heap of unintelligible ideas.

The celebrated Mr. Boyle, the great successor of Lord Verulam (St. Albans) in experimental philosophy, is said to have declared against the Philosophy of Aristotle, as having in it more of words than things; promising much and performing little; and giving the Inventions of Men for indubitable proofs, instead of building upon observation and experiment. He was so zealous for, and so scrupulous about, this true method of learning by experiment, that, though the _Cartesian_ philosophy then made a great noise in the world, yet he would never be persuaded to read the works of _Descartes_; for fear he should be amused, and led away, by plausible accounts of things founded on conjecture, and merely hypothetical. (See Art. _Boyle_, in the New and General Biography.)—This great and excellent man was born the same year in which Bacon, Viscount St. Albans, died.

Epicurus, the disciple of Democritus, and follower of the Philosophy of Aristotle, was engaged, although unsuccessfully enough, in the labyrinth of Metaphysics, as well as in Physics. He adopted the system of _Atoms_, which Democritus first propagated; and hence appears to be derived Descartes’s equally preposterous doctrine of the _Plenum_ and of _Vortices_.

To this cause, then, may be fairly attributed the half-enlightened notions of the Deity,[7] and of a future state, entertained by these pagan searchers after truth. To the same cause may be traced the sentiment that dictated the reply made by Anaxagoras,—when, in consequence of his incessant contemplation of the stars, he was asked, “_if he had no concern for his country?_”—“_I incessantly regard my country_,” said he, pointing to Heaven.

“Nulla gens tam fera, quæ non sciat Deum habendum esse, quamvis ignoret qualem habere deceat.”

CIC. de Naturâ Deorum.

Plato’s attention to the same celestial science unquestionably enlarged his notions of the Deity, and enabled him to think the more justly of the moral attributes of human nature. According to Plato—whose morality, on the whole, corresponds with the system maintained by Socrates,[8]—the human soul is a ray from the Divinity. He believed, that this minute portion of infinite Wisdom, Goodness and Power, was omniscient, while united with the Parent stock from which it emanated; but, when combined with the body, that it contracted ignorance and impurity from that union. He did not, like his master Socrates, neglect natural philosophy; but investigated many principles which relate to that branch of knowledge:—and, according to this philosopher, all things consisted of two principles,—_God_ and _matter_.

While Plato followed the morals of Socrates, he cultivated the metaphysical opinions of Pythagoras. He is said to have founded his physics on the notions of Heraclitus: it may be presumed, nevertheless, that he derived that branch of his system from a better source.

It is evident that Plato believed in the immortality of the soul of man; but he had, at the same time, very inadequate conceptions of the mode or state of its existence, when separated from the body. It seems to have been reserved for the Christian dispensation, to elucidate this great _arcanum_, hidden from the most sagacious of the heathen philosophers.[9] It was the difficulty that arose on this subject, the incapability of knowing how to dispose of the soul, or intellectual principle in the constitution of our species, after its disentanglement from the body; a difficulty by which all the philosophers, antecedent to the promulgation of Christianity, were subjected to unsurmountable perplexities;—it was this, that rendered even the expansive genius of Anaxagoras utterly incompetent to conceive of the possibility that the soul should exist, independent of some union with matter. He therefore invented the doctrine of the _Metempsychosis_; in order to provide some receptacle of organised matter for that imperishable intellectual principle attached to our nature here, after its departure from the human frame; and to which new vehicle of the vital spirit of its original but abandoned abode, the extinguished corporeal man, its union with it should impart the powers and faculties of animal life.

“_Reason_, tho’ taught by sense to range on high, To trace the stars and measure all the sky; Tho’ fancy, memory, foresight fill her train, And o’er the beast he lifts the pride of man; Yet, still to _matter_, _form_ and _space_ confin’d, Or moral truths or laws that rule mankind, Could ne’er, _unaided_, pierce the mental gloom, Explore _new_ scenes _beyond the closing tomb_, Reach with _immortal_ hope the blest abode, Or raise one thought of _spirit_ or of GOD.” _Vision of Columbus_, book VIII.