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It is on the pedestal of Bacon, not on that of Epicurus, that those noble lines
ought to be inscribed
"0 tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen Qui primus potuisti, illustrans
commoda vitae."
In the fifth century Christianity had conquered Paganism, and Paganism had
infected Christianity. The Church was now victorious and corrupt. The rites of
the Pantheon had passed into her worship, the subtleties of the Academy into her
creed. In an evil day, though with great pomp and solemnity,--we quote the
language of Bacon,--was the ill-starred alliance stricken between the old
philosophy and the new faith.1 Questions widely different
from those which had employed the ingenuity of Pyrrho and Carneades, but just as
subtle, just as interminable, and just as unprofitable, exercised the minds of
the lively and voluble Greeks. When learning began to revive in the West,
similar trifles occupied the sharp and vigorous intellects of the Schoolmen.
There was another sowing of the wind, and another reaping of the whirlwind. The
great work of improving the condition of the human race was still considered as
unworthy of a man of learning. Those who undertook that task, if what they
effected could be readily comprehended, were despised as mechanics; if not, they
were in danger of being burned as conjurers.
There cannot be a stronger proof of the degree in which the human mind had been
misdirected than the history of the two greatest events which took place during
the middle ages. We speak of the invention of Gunpowder and of the invention of
Printing. The dates of both are unknown. The authors of both are unknown. Nor
was this because men were too rude and ignorant to value intellectual
superiority. The inventor of gunpowder appears to have been contemporary with
Petrarch and Boccaccio. The inventor of printing was certainly contemporary with
Nicholas the Fifth, with Cosmo de' Medici, and with a crowd of distinguished
scholars. But the human mind still retained that fatal bent which it had
received two thousand years earlier. George of Trebisond and Marsilio Ficino
would not easily have been brought to believe that the inventor of the
printing-press had done more for mankind than themselves, or than those ancient
writers of whom they were the enthusiastic votaries.
At length the time arrived when the barren philosophy which had, during so many
ages, employed the faculties of the ablest of men, was destined to fall. It had
worn many shapes. It had mingled itself with many creeds. It had survived
revolutions in which empires, religions, languages, races, had perished. Driven
from its ancient haunts, it had taken sanctuary in that Church which it had
persecuted, and had, like the daring fiends of the poet, placed its seat
"next the seat of God, And with its darkness dared affront his light."
Words, and more words, and nothing but words, had been all the fruit of all the
toil of all the most renowned sages of sixty generations. But the days of this
sterile exuberance were numbered.
Many causes predisposed the public mind to a change. The study of a great
variety of ancient writers, though it did not give a right direction to
philosophical research, did much towards destroying that blind reverence for
authority which had prevailed when Aristotle ruled alone. The rise of the
Florentine sect of Platonists, a sect to which belonged some of the finest minds
of the fifteenth century, was not an unimportant event. The mere substitution of
the Academic for the Peripatetic philosophy would indeed have done little good.
But anything was better than the old habit of unreasoning servility. It was
something to have a choice of tyrants. "A spark of freedom," as Gibbon has
justly remarked, "was produced by this collision of adverse servitude."
Other causes might be mentioned. But it is chiefly to the great reformation of
religion that we owe the great reformation of philosophy. The alliance between
the Schools and the Vatican had for ages been so close that those who threw off
the dominion of the Vatican could not continue to recognize the authority of the
Schools. Most of the chiefs of the schism treated the Peripatetic philosophy
with contempt, and spoke of Aristotle as if Aristotle had been answerable for
all the dogmas of Thomas Aquinas. "Nullo apud Lutheranos philosophiam esse in
pretio," was a reproach which the defenders of the Church of Rome loudly
repeated, and which many of the Protestant leaders considered as a compliment.
Scarcely any text was more frequently cited by the reformers than that in which
St. Paul cautions the Colossians not to let any man spoil them by philosophy.
Luther, almost at the outset of his career, went so far as to declare that no
man could be at once a proficient in the school of Aristotle and in that of
Christ. Zwingle, Bucer, Peter Martyr, Calvin, held similar language. In some of
the Scotch universities, the Aristotelian system was discarded for that of
Ramus. Thus, before the birth of Bacon, the empire of the scholastic philosophy
had been shaken to its foundations. There was in the intellectual world an
anarchy resembling that which in the political world often follows the overthrow
of an old and deeply rooted Government. Antiquity, prescription, the sound of
great names, have ceased to awe mankind. The dynasty which had reigned for ages
was at an end; and the vacant throne was left to be struggled for by pretenders.
The first effect of this great revolution was, as Bacon most justly observed,2 to give for a time an undue importance to the mere
graces of style. The new breed of scholars, the Aschams and Buchanans, nourished
with the finest compositions of the Augustan age, regarded with loathing the
dry, crabbed, and barbarous diction of respondents and opponents. They were far
less studious about the matter of their writing than about the manner. They
succeeded in reforming Latinity; but they never even aspired to effect a reform
in Philosophy.
At this time Bacon appeared. It is altogether incorrect to say, as has often
been said, that he was the first man who rose up against the Aristotelian
philosophy when in the height of his power. The authority of that philosophy
had, as we have shown, received a fatal blow long before he was born. Several
speculators, among whom Ramus is the best known, had recently attempted to form
new sects. Bacon's own expressions about the state of public opinion in the time
of Luther are clear and strong: "Accedebat," says he, "odium et contemptus,
illis ipsis temporibus ortus erga Scholasticos." And again, "Scholasticorum
doctrina despectui prorsus haberi coepit tanquam aspera et barbara."3 The part which Bacon played
in this great change was the part, not of Robespierre, but of Bonaparte. The
ancient order of things had been subverted. Some bigots still cherished with
devoted loyalty the remembrance of the fallen monarchy, and exerted themselves
to effect a restoration. But the majority had no such feeling. Freed, yet not
knowing how to use their freedom, they pursued no determinate course, and had
found no leader capable of conducting them.
That leader at length arose. The philosophy which he taught was essentially new.
It differed from that of the celebrated ancient teachers, not merely in method,
but also in object. Its object was the good of mankind, in the sense in which
the mass of mankind always have understood and always will understand the word
good. "Meditor," said Bacon, "instaurationem philosophiae ejusmodi quae nihil
inanis aut abstracti habeat, quaeque vitae humanae conditiones in melius
provehat."4
The difference between the philosophy of Bacon and that of his predecessors
cannot, we think, be better illustrated than by comparing his views on some
important subjects with those of Plato. We select Plato, because we conceive
that he did more than any other person towards giving to the minds of
speculative men that bent which they retained till they received from Bacon a
new impulse in a diametrically opposite direction.
It is curious to observe how differently these great men estimated the value of
every kind of knowledge. Take Arithmetic for example. Plato, after speaking
slightly of the convenience of being able to reckon and compute in the ordinary
transactions of life, passes to what he considers as a far more important
advantage. The study of the properties of numbers, he tells us, habituates the
mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and raises us above the material
universe. He would have his disciples apply themselves to this study, not that
they may be able to buy or sell, not that they may qualify themselves to be
shopkeepers or traveling merchants, but that they may learn to withdraw their
minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this visible and tangible world, and
to fix them on the immutable essences of things.5
Bacon, on the other hand, valued this branch of knowledge, only on account of
its uses with reference to that visible and tangible world which Plato so much
despised. He speaks with scorn of the mystical arithmetic of the later
Platonists, and laments the propensity of mankind to employ, on mere matters of
curiosity, powers the whole exertion of which is required for purposes of solid
advantage. He advises arithmeticians to leave these trifles, and to employ
themselves in framing convenient expressions, which may be of use in physical
researches.6
The same reasons which led Plato to recommend the study of arithmetic led him to
recommend also the study of mathematics. The vulgar crowd of geometricians, he
says, will not understand him. They have practice always in view. They do not
know that the real use of the science is to lead men to the knowledge of
abstract, essential, eternal truth.7 Indeed, if we
are to believe Plutarch, Plato carried this feeling so far that he considered
geometry as degraded by being applied to any purpose of vulgar utility. Archytas, it seems, had framed machines of extraordinary power on mathematical
principles.8 Plato
remonstrated with his friend, and declared that this was to degrade a noble
intellectual exercise into a low craft, fit only for carpenters and
wheelwrights. The office of geometry, he said, was to discipline the mind, not
to minister to the base wants of the body. His interference was successful; and
from that time, according to Plutarch, the science of mechanics was considered
as unworthy of the attention of a philosopher.
Archimedes in a later age imitated and surpassed Archytas. But even Archimedes
was not free from the prevailing notion that geometry was degraded by being
employed to produce anything useful. It was with difficulty that he was induced
to stoop from speculation to practice. He was half ashamed of those inventions
which were the wonder of hostile nations, and always spoke of them slightingly
as mere amusements, as trifles in which a mathematician might be suffered to
relax his mind after intense application to the higher parts of his science.
The opinion of Bacon on this subject was diametrically opposed to that of the
ancient philosophers. He valued geometry chiefly, if not solely, on account of
those uses, which to Plato appeared so base. And it is remarkable that the
longer Bacon lived the stronger this feeling became. When in 1605 he wrote the
two books on the Advancement of Learning, he dwelt on the advantages which
mankind derived from mixed mathematics; but he at the same time admitted that
the beneficial effect produced by mathematical study on the intellect, though a
collateral advantage, was "no less worthy than that which was principal and
intended." But it is evident that his views underwent a change. When, near
twenty years later, he published the De Augmentis, which is the Treatise on the
Advancement of Learning, greatly expanded and carefully corrected, he made
important alterations in the part which related to mathematics. He condemned
with severity the high, pretensions of the mathematicians, "delicias et fastum
mathematicorum." Assuming the well-being of the human race to be the end of
knowledge,9 he pronounced that
mathematical science could claim no higher rank than that of an appendage or
auxiliary to other sciences. Mathematical science, he says, is the handmaid of
natural philosophy; she ought to demean herself as such; and he declares that he
cannot conceive by what ill chance it has happened that she presumes to claim
precedence over her mistress. He predicts--a prediction which would have made
Plato shudder--that as more and more discoveries are made in physics, there will
be more and more branches of mixed mathematics. Of that collateral advantage the
value of which, twenty years before, he rated so highly, he says not one word.
This omission cannot have been the effect of mere inadvertence. His own treatise
was before him. From that treatise he deliberately expunged whatever was
favorable to the study of pure mathematics, and inserted several keen
reflections on the ardent votaries of that study. This fact, in our opinion,
admits of only one explanation. Bacon's love of those pursuits which directly
tend to improve the condition of mankind, and his jealousy of all pursuits
merely curious, had grown upon him, and had, it may be, become immoderate. He
was afraid of using any expression which might have the effect of inducing any
man of talents to employ in speculations, useful only to the mind of the
speculator, a single hour which might be employed in extending the empire of man
over matter.10 If Bacon
erred here, we must acknowledge that we greatly prefer his error to the opposite
error of Plato. We have no patience with a philosophy which, like those Roman
matrons who swallowed abortives in order to preserve their shapes, takes pains
to be barren for fear of being homely.
Let us pass to astronomy. This was one of the sciences which Plato exhorted his
disciples to learn, but for reasons far removed from common habits of thinking.
"Shall we set down astronomy," says Socrates, "among the subjects of study?"11 "I think so," answers his young friend Glaucon:
"to know something about the seasons, the months, and the years is of use for
military purposes, as well as for agriculture and navigation." "It amuses me,"
says Socrates, "to see how afraid you are, lest the common herd of people should
accuse you of recommending useless studies." He then proceeds, in that pure and
magnificent diction which, as Cicero said, Jupiter would use if Jupiter spoke
Greek, to explain, that the use of astronomy is not to add to the vulgar
comforts of life, but to assist in raising the mind to the contemplation of
things which are to be perceived by the pure intellect alone. The knowledge of
the actual motions of the heavenly bodies Socrates considers as of little value.
The appearances which make the sky beautiful at night are, he tells us, like the
figures which a geometrician draws on the sand, mere examples, mere helps to
feeble minds. We must get beyond them; we must neglect them; we must attain to
an astronomy which is as independent of the actual stars as geometrical truth is
independent of the lines of an ill-drawn diagram. This is, we imagine, very
nearly if not exactly, the astronomy which Bacon compared to the ox of
Prometheus,12 a sleek, well-shaped hide, stuffed
with rubbish, goodly to look at, but containing nothing to eat. He complained
that astronomy had, to its great injury, been separated from natural philosophy,
of which it was one of the noblest provinces, and annexed to the domain of
mathematics. The world stood in need, he said, of a very different astronomy, of
a living astronomy,13 of an astronomy which should set forth
the nature, the motion, and the influences of the heavenly bodies, as they
really are.14
On the greatest and most useful of all human inventions, the invention of
alphabetical writing, Plato did not look with much complacency. He seems to have
thought that the use of letters had operated on the human mind as the use of the
go-cart in learning to walk, or of corks in learning to swim, is said to operate
on the human body. It was a support which, in his opinion, soon became
indispensable to those who used it, which made vigorous exertion first
unnecessary and then impossible. The powers of the intellect would, he
conceived, have been more fully developed without this delusive aid. Men would
have been compelled to exercise the understanding and the memory, and, by deep
and assiduous meditation, to make truth thoroughly their own. Now, on the
contrary, much knowledge is traced on paper, but little is engraved in the soul.
A man is certain that he can find information at a moment's notice when he wants
it. He therefore suffers it to fade from his mind. Such a man cannot in
strictness be said to know anything. He has the show without the reality of
wisdom. These opinions Plato has put into the mouth of an ancient king of Egypt.15 But it is evident from the context that they were his own;
and so they were understood to be by Quinctilian.16 Indeed they
are in perfect accordance with the whole Platonic system.
Bacon's views, as may easily be supposed, were widely different.17 The powers of the memory, he observes, without the help of
writing, can do little towards the advancement of any useful science. He
acknowledges that the memory may be disciplined to such a point as to be able to
perform very extraordinary feats. But on such feats he sets little value. The
habits of his mind, he tells us, are such that he is not disposed to rate highly
any accomplishment, however rare, which is of no practical use to mankind. As to
these prodigious achievements of the memory, he ranks them with the exhibitions
of rope-dancers and tumblers. "These two performances," he says, "are much of
the same sort. The one is an abuse of the powers of the body; the other is an
abuse of the powers of the mind. Both may perhaps excite our wonder; but neither
is entitled to our respect."
To Plato, the science of medicine appeared to be of very disputable advantages.18 He did not indeed object to quick cures for acute
disorders, or for injuries produced by accidents. But the art which resists the
slow sap of a chronic disease, which repairs frames enervated by lust, swollen
by gluttony, or inflamed by wine, which encourages sensuality by mitigating the
natural punishment of the sensualist, and prolongs existence when the intellect
has ceased to retain its entire energy, had no share of his esteem. A life
protracted by medical skill he pronounced to be a long death. The exercise of
the art of medicine ought, he said, to be tolerated, so far as that art may
serve to cure the occasional distempers of men whose constitutions are good. As
to those who have bad constitutions, let them die; and the sooner the better.
Such men are unfit for war, for magistracy, for the management of their domestic
affairs, for severe study and speculation. If they engage in any vigorous mental
exercise, they are troubled with giddiness and fullness of the head, all which
they lay to the account of philosophy. The best thing that can happen to such
wretches is to have done with life at once. He quotes mythical authority in
support of this doctrine; and reminds his disciples that the practice of the
sons of Aeculapius, as described by Homer, extended only to the cure of external
injuries.
Far different was the philosophy of Bacon. Of all the sciences, that which he
seems to have regarded with the greatest interest was the science which, in
Plato's opinion, would not be tolerated in a well-regulated community. To make
men perfect was no part of Bacon's plan. His humble aim was to make imperfect
men comfortable. The beneficence of his philosophy resembled the beneficence of
the common Father, whose sun rises on the evil and the good, whose rain descends
for the just and the unjust. In Plato's opinion man was made for philosophy; in
Bacon's opinion philosophy was made for man; it was a means to an end; and that
end was to increase the pleasures and to mitigate the pains of millions who are
not and cannot be philosophers. That a valetudinarian who took great pleasure in
being wheeled along his terrace, who relished his boiled chicken, and his weak
wine and water, and who enjoyed a hearty laugh over the Queen of Navarre's
tales, should be treated as a caput lupinum because he could not read the
Timaeus without a headache, was a notion which the humane spirit of the English
school of wisdom altogether rejected. Bacon would not have thought it beneath
the dignity of a philosopher to contrive an improved garden chair for such a
valetudinarian, to devise some way of rendering his medicines more palatable, to
invent repasts which he might enjoy, and pillows on which he might sleep
soundly; and this though there might not be the smallest hope that the mind of
the poor invalid would ever rise to the contemplation of the ideal beautiful and
the ideal good. As Plato had cited the religious legends of Greece to justify
his contempt for the more recondite parts of the heart of healing, Bacon
vindicated the dignity of that art by appealing to the example of Christ, and
reminded men that the great physician of the soul did not disdain to be also the
physician of the body.19
When we pass from the science of medicine to that of legislation, we find the
same difference between the systems of these two great men. Plato, at the
commencement of the Dialogue on Laws, lays it down as a fundamental principle
that the end of legislation is to make men virtuous. It is unnecessary to point
out the extravagant conclusions to which such a proposition leads. Bacon well
knew to how great an extent the happiness of every society must depend on the
virtue of its members; and he also knew what legislators can and what they
cannot do for the purpose of promoting virtue. The view which he has given of
the end of legislation, and of the principal means for the attainment of that
end, has always seemed to us eminently happy, even among the many happy passages
of the same kind with which his works abound. "Finis et scopus quem leges
intueri atque ad quem jussiones et sanctiones suas dirigere debent, non alius
est quam ut cives feliciter degant. Id fiet si pietate et religione recte
instituti, moribus honesti, armis adversus hostes externos tuti, legum auxilio
adversus seditiones et privatas injurias muniti, imperio et magistratibus
obsequentes, copiis et opibus locupletes et florentes fuerint."20 The end is the well-being of the people. The means
are the imparting of moral and religious education; the providing of everything
necessary for defense against foreign enemies; the maintaining of internal
order; the establishing of a judicial, financial, and commercial system, under
which wealth may be rapidly accumulated and securely enjoyed.
Even with respect to the form in which laws ought to be drawn, there is a
remarkable difference of opinion between the Greek and the Englishman. Plato
thought a preamble essential; Bacon thought it mischievous. Each was consistent
with himself. Plato, considering the moral improvement of the people as the end
of legislation, justly inferred that a law which commanded and threatened, but
which neither convinced the reason, nor touched the heart, must be a most
imperfect law. He was not content with deterring from theft a man who still
continued to be a thief at heart, with restraining a son who hated his mother
from beating his mother. The only obedience on which he set much value was the
obedience which an enlightened understanding yields to reason, and which a
virtuous disposition yields to precepts of virtue. He really seems to have
believed that, by prefixing to every law an eloquent and pathetic exhortation,
he should, to a great extent, render penal enactments superfluous. Bacon
entertained no such romantic hopes; and he well knew the practical
inconveniences of the course which Plato recommended. "Neque nobis," says he,
"prologi legum qui inepti olim habiti sunt, et leges introducunt disputantes non
jubentes, utique placerent, si priscos mores ferre possemus. . . . Quantum fieri
potest prologi evitentur, et lex incipiat a jussione."21
Each of the great men whom we have compared intended to illustrate his system by
a philosophical romance; and each left his romance imperfect. Had Plato lived to
finish the Critias, a comparison between that noble fiction and the new Atlantis
would probably have furnished us with still more striking instances than any
which we have given. It is amusing to think with what horror he would have seen
such an institution as Solomon's House rising in his republic: with what
vehemence he would have ordered the brew-houses, the perfume-houses, and the
dispensatories to be pulled down--and with what inexorable rigor he would have
driven beyond the frontier all the Fellows of the College, Merchants of Light
and Depredators, Lamps and Pioneers.
To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was
to exalt man into a god. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to provide man
with what he requires while he continues to be man. The aim of the Platonic
philosophy was to raise us far above vulgar wants. The aim of the Baconian
philosophy was to supply our vulgar wants. The former aim was noble; but the
latter was attainable. Plato drew a good bow; but, like Acestes in Virgil, he
aimed at the stars; and therefore, though there was no want of strength or
skill, the shot was thrown away. His arrow was indeed followed by a track of
dazzling radiance, but it struck nothing.
"Volans liquidis in nubibus arsit arundo Signavitque viam flammis, tenuisque
recessit Consumta in ventos."
Bacon fixed his eye on a mark which was placed on the earth, and within
bow-shot, and hit it in the white. The philosophy of Plato began in words and
ended in words, noble words indeed, words such as were to be expected from the
finest of human intellects exercising boundless dominion over the finest of
human languages. The philosophy of Bacon began in observations and ended in
arts.
The boast of the ancient philosophers was that their doctrine formed the minds
of men to a high degree of wisdom and virtue. This was indeed the only practical
good which the most celebrated of those teachers even pretended to effect; and
undoubtedly, if they had effected this, they would have deserved far higher
praise than if they had discovered the most salutary medicines or constructed
the most powerful machines. But the truth is that, in those very matters in
which alone they professed to do any good to mankind, in those very matters for
the sake of which they neglected all the vulgar interests of mankind, they did
nothing, or worse than nothing. They promised what was impracticable; they
despised what was practicable; they filled the world with long words and long
beards; and they left it as wicked and as ignorant as they found it.
An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia. The smallest
actual good is better than the most magnificent promises of impossibilities. The
wise man of the Stoics would, no doubt, be a grander object than a steam-engine.
But there are steam-engines. And the wise man of the Stoics is yet to be born. A
philosophy which should enable a man to feel perfectly happy while in agonies of
pain would be better than a philosophy which assuages pain. But we know that
there are remedies which will assuage pain; and we know that the ancient sages
liked the toothache just as little as their neighbors. A philosophy which should
extinguish cupidity would be better than a philosophy which should devise laws
for the security of property. But it is possible to make laws which shall, to a
very great extent, secure property. And we do not understand how any motives
which the ancient philosophy furnished could extinguish cupidity. We know indeed
that the philosophers were no better than other men. From the testimony of
friends as well as of foes, from the confessions of Epictetus and Seneca, as
well as from the sneers of Lucian and the fierce invectives of Juvenal, it is
plain that these teachers of virtue had all the vices of their neighbors, with
the additional vice of hypocrisy. Some people may think the object of the
Baconian philosophy a low object, but they cannot deny that, high or low, it has
been attained. They cannot deny that every year makes an addition to what Bacon
called "fruit." They cannot deny that mankind have made, and are making, great
and constant progress in the road which he pointed out to them. Was there any
such progressive movement among the ancient philosophers? After they had been
declaiming eight hundred years, had they made the world better than when they
began? Our belief is that, among the philosophers themselves, instead of a
progressive improvement there was a progressive degeneracy. An abject
superstition which Democritus or Anaxagoras would have rejected with scorn,
added the last disgrace to the long dotage of the Stoic and Platonic schools.
Those unsuccessful attempts to articulate which are so delightful and
interesting in a child shock and disgust in an aged paralytic; and in the same
way, those wild and mythological fictions which charm us, when we hear them
lisped by Greek poetry in its infancy, excite a mixed sensation of pity and
loathing, when mumbled by Greek philosophy in its old age. We know that guns,
cutlery, spy-glasses, clocks, are better in our time than they were in the time
of our fathers, and were better in the time of our fathers than they were in the
time of our grandfathers. We might, therefore, be inclined to think that, when a
philosophy which boasted that its object was the elevation and purification of
the mind, and which for this object neglected the sordid office of ministering
to the comforts of the body, had flourished in the highest honor during many
hundreds of years, a vast moral amelioration must have taken place. Was it so?
Look at the schools of this wisdom four centuries before the Christian era and
four centuries after that era. Compare the men whom those schools formed at
those two periods. Compare Plato and Libanius. Compare Pericles and Julian. This
philosophy confessed, nay boasted, that for every end but one it was useless.
Had it attained that one end?
1 Cogitata et visa.
2 De Augmentis, Lib. i.
3 Both these
passages are in the first book of the De Augmentis.
4 Redargutio Philosophiarum.
5 Plato's Republic, Book vii.
6 De Augmentis, Lib. iii. Cap. 6.
7 Plato's Republic, Book vii.
8 Plutarch, Sympos. viii. and Life of Marcellus. The machines of
Archytas are also mentioned by Aulus Gellius and Diogenes Laertius.
9 Usui et commodis hominum consulimus.
10 Compare the passage relating to mathematics in the Second Book of
the Advancement of Learning with the De Augmentis Lib. iii. Cap. 6.
11 Plato's Republic, Book vii.
12 De Augmentis, Lib. iii. Cap. 4
13 Astronomia viva.
14 Quae substantiam et motum et influxum ecelestium, prout re vera
sunt proponat." Compare this language with Plato's "ta d'en to ourano easomen."
15 Plato's Phaedrus.
16 Quinctilian, xi.
17 De Augmentis, Lib. v. Cap. 5.
18 Plato's Republic, Book iii.
19 De Augmentis, Lib, iv. Cap.2
20 De Augmentis,
Lib. viii. Cap. 3, Aph. 5.
21 Ibid., Lib. viii. Cap.
3, Aph. 69.
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