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The following arguments, however, may perhaps awaken some few of these who are less lethargic than the rest, from the sleep of sense, and enable them to elevate their mental eye from the dark mire in which they are plunged, and gain a glimpse of this most weighty truth, that there is another world, of which this is nothing more than a most obscure resemblance, and another life, of which this is but the flying mockery. My present discourse therefore is addressed to those who consider experiment as the only solid criterion of truth. In the first place then, these men appear to be ignorant of the invariable laws of demonstration properly so called, and that the necessary requisites of all demonstrative propositions are these: that they exist as causes, are primary, more excellent, peculiar, true, and known than the conclusions. For every demonstration not only consists of principles prior to others, but of such as are eminently first; since if the assumed propositions may be demonstrated by other assumptions, such propositions may indeed appear prior to the conclusions, but are by no means entitled to the appellation of first. Others, on the contrary, which require no demonstration, but are of themselves manifest, are deservedly esteemed the first, the truest, and the best. Such indemonstrable truths were called by the ancients axioms from their majesty and authority, as the assumptions which constitute demonstrative syllogisms derive all their force and efficacy from these. In the next place, they seem not to be sufficiently aware, that universal is better than partial demonstration. For that demonstration is the more excellent which is derived from the better cause; but a universal is more extended and excellent than a partial cause; since the arduous investigation of the why in any subject is only stopped by the arrival at universals. Thus if we desire to know why the outward angles of a triangle are equal to four right angles, and it is answered, Because the triangle is isosceles; we again ask, but why Because isosceles? And if it be replied, Because it is a triangle; we may again inquire, But why because a triangle? To which we finally answer, because a triangle is a right-lined figure. And here our inquiry rests at that universal idea, which embraces every preceding particular one, and is contained in no other more general and comprehensive than itself. Add too, that the demonstration of particulars is almost the demonstration of infinites; of universals the demonstration of finites; and of infinites there can be no science. That demonstration likewise is the best which furnishes the mind with the most ample knowledge; and this is, alone, the province of universals. We may also add, that he who knows universals knows particulars likewise in capacity; but we can not infer that he who has the best knowledge of particulars, knows any thing of universals. And lastly, that which is universal is the object of intellect and reason; but particulars are coordinated to the perceptions of sense. But here perhaps the experimentalist will say, admitting all this to be true, yet we no otherwise obtain a perception of these universals than by an induction of particulars, and abstraction from sensibles. To this, I answer that the universal which is the proper object of science, is not by any means the offspring of abstraction; and induction is no otherwise subservient to its existence than an exciting cause. For if scientific conclusions are indubitable, if the truth of demonstration is necessary and eternal, this universal is truly all, and not like that gained by abstraction, limited to a certain number of particulars. Thus, the proposition that the angles of every triangle are equal to two right, if it is indubitably true, that is, if the term every in it really includes all triangles, cannot be the result of any abstraction; for this, however extended it may be, is limited, and falls far short of universal comprehension. Whence is it then that the dianoetic power concludes thus confidently that the Proposition is true of all triangles? For if it be said that the mind, after having abstracted triangle from a certain number of particulars, adds from itself what is wanting to complete the all; in the first place, no man, I believe, will say that any such operation as this took place in his mind when he first learnt this proposition; and in the next place, if this should be granted, it would follow that such proposition is a mere fiction, since it is uncertain whether that which is added to complete the all is truly added; and thus the conclusion will no longer be indubitably necessary. In short, if the words all and every, with which every page of theoretic mathematics is full, mean what they are conceived by all men to mean, and if the universals which they signify are the proper objects of science, such universals must subsist in the soul prior to the energies of sense. Hence it will follow that induction is no otherwise subservient to science, than as it produces credibility in axioms and petitions; and this by exciting the universal conception of these latent in the soul. The particulars, therefore, of which an induction is made in order to produce science, must be so simple, that they may be immediately apprehended, and that the universal may be predicated of them without hesitation. The particulars of the experimentalists are not of this kind, and therefore never can be sources of science truly so called. Of this, however, the man of experiment appears to be totally ignorant, and in consequence of this, he is likewise ignorant that parts can only be truly known through wholes, and that this is particularly the case with parts when they belong to a whole, which, as we have already observed, from comprehending in itself the parts which it produces, is called a whole prior to parts. As he, therefore, would by no means merit the appellation of a physician who should attempt to cure any part of the human body, without a previous knowledge of the whole; so neither can he know any thing truly of the vegetable life of plants, who has not a previous knowledge of that vegetable life which subsists in the earth as a whole prior to, because the principle and cause of all partial vegetable life, and who still prior to this has not a knowledge of that greater whole of this kind which subsists in nature herself; nor, as Hippocrates justly observes, can he know any thing truly of the nature of the human body who is ignorant what nature is considered as a great comprehending whole. And if this be true, and it is so most indubitably, with all physiological inquiries, how much more must it be the case with respect to a knowledge of those incorporeal forms to which we ascended in the first part of this Introduction, and which in consequence of proceeding from wholes entirely exempt from body are participated by it, with much greater obscurity and imperfection? Here then is the great difference, and a mighty one it is, between the knowledge gained by the most elaborate experiments, and that acquired by scientific reasoning, founded on the spontaneous, unperverted, and self-luminous conceptions of the soul. The former does not even lead its votary up to that one nature of the earth from which the natures of all the animals and plants on its surface, and of all the minerals and metals in its interior parts, blossom as from a perennial root. The latter conducts its votary through all the several mundane wholes up to that great whole the world itself, and thence leads him through the luminous order of incorporeal wholes to that vast whole of wholes, in which all other wholes are centred and rooted, and which is no other than the principle of all principles, and the fountain of deity itself. No less remarkable likewise, is the difference between the tendencies of the two pursuits, for the one elevates the soul to the most luminous heights, and to that great ineffable which is beyond all altitude; but the other is the cause of a mighty calamity to the soul, since, according to the elegant expression of Plutarch, it extinguishes her principal and brightest eye, the knowledge of divinity. In short, the one leads to all that is grand, sublime and splendid in the universe; the other to all that is little, groveling[14] and dark. The one is the parent of the most pure and ardent piety; the genuine progeny of the other are impiety and atheism. And, in fine, the one confers on its votary the most sincere, permanent, and exalted delight; the other continual disappointment, and unceasing molestation.
----------------- If such then are the consequences, such the tendencies of experimental inquiries, when prosecuted as the criterion of truth, and daily experience[15] unhappily shows that they are, there can be no other remedy for this enormous evil than the intellectual philosophy of Plato. So obviously excellent indeed is the tendency of this philosophy, that its author, for a period of more than two thousand years, has been universally celebrated by the epithet of divine. Such too is its preeminence, that it may be shown, without much difficulty, that the greatest men of antiquity, from the time in which its salutary light first blessed the human race, have been more or less imbued with its sacred principles, have been more or less the votaries of its divine truths. Thus, to mention a few from among a countless multitude. In the catalogue of those endued with sovereign power, it had for its votaries Dion of Siracusian, Julian the Roman, and Chosroes the Persian, emperor; among the leaders of armies, it had Chabrias and Phocion, those brave generals of the Athenians; among mathematicians, those leading stars of science, Eudoxus, Archimedes[16] and Euclid; among biographers, the inimitable Plutarch; among physicians, the admirable Galen; among rhetoricians, those unrivaled orators Demosthenes and Cicero; among critics, that prince of philologists, Longinus; and among poets, the most learned and majestic Virgil. Instances, though not equally illustrious, yet approximating to these in splendour, may doubtless be adduced after the fall of the Roman empire; but then they have been formed on these great ancients as models, and are, consequently, only rivulets from Platonic streams. And instances of excellence in philosophic attainments, similar to those among the Greeks, might have been enumerated among the moderns, if the hand of barbaric despotism had not compelled philosophy to retire into the deepest solitude, by demolishing her schools, and involving the human intellect in Cimmerian darkness. In our own country, however, though no one appears to have wholly devoted himself to the study of this philosophy, and he who does not will never penetrate its depths, yet we have a few bright examples of no common proficiency in its more accessible parts.
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[16] I have ranked Archimedes among the Platonists, because he cultivated
the mathematical sciences Platonically, as is evident from the testimony of
Plutarch in his Life of Marcellus, p. 307. For he there informs us that
Archimedes considered the being busied about mechanics, and in short, every
art which is connected with the common purposes of life, as ignoble and
illiberal; and that those things alone were objects of his ambition with
which the beautiful and the excellent were present, unmingled with the
necessary. The great accuracy and elegance in the demonstrations of Euclid
and Archimedes, which have not been equaled by any of our greatest modern
mathematicians, were derived from a deep conviction of this important
truth. On the other hand modern mathematicians, through a profound
ignorance of this divine truth, and looking to nothing but the wants and
conveniences of the animal life of man, as if the gratification of his
senses was his only end, have corrupted pure geometry, by mingling with it
algebraical calculations, and through eagerness to reduce it as much as
possible to practical purposes, have more anxiously sought after
conciseness than accuracy, facility than elegance of geometrical
demonstration. The instances I allude to are Shaftesbury, Akenside, Harris, Petwin, and Sydenham. So splendid is the specimen of philosophic abilities displayed by these writers, like the fair dawning of same unclouded morning, that we have only deeply to regret that the sun of their genius sat before we were gladdened with its effulgence. Had it shone with its full strength, the writer of this Introduction would not have attempted either to translate the works, or elucidate the doctrines of Plato; but though it rose with vigor, it dispersed not the clouds in which its light was gradually involved, and the eye in vain anxiously waited for it's meridian beam. In short, the principles of the philosophy of Plato are of all others the most friendly to true piety, pure morality, solid learning, and sound government. For as it is scientific in all its parts, and in these parts comprehends all that can be known by man in theology and ethics, and all that is necessary for him to know in physics, it must consequently contain in itself the source of all that is great and good both to individuals and communities, must necessarily exalt while it benefits, and deify while it exalts.
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