Recherches far l'Origine des Découvertes attribuées aux Modernes, &c. i. e. An Inquiry into the Origin of the Discoveries attributed to the Moderns, wherein is demonstrated that our most celebrated Philofophers have been indebted to the Antients for the greatest Part of their Knowledge; and that many important Truths concerning Religion were known to the Sages of Paganifm. By Mr. Dutens. 2 Vols. 8vo. Paris, 1766.

THO

HOUGH the very ingenious Author of this work treats of a matter which was the occafion of much difpute, both here and in France, during the last century, and on which much was wrote by Perrault, Fontenelle, Sir William Temple, Wotton and others, yet he esteems his prefent work, as new in its kind, and in the manner of treating his fubject; their productions having been, as he obferves, rather florid declamations, than reafonings founded on fufficient proofs: the only work which he has met with, refembling his own, being that of Almeloveen, intitled Inventa Nov-antiqua; but that treats only of medicine, which makes a very small part of the object of the prefent inquiry. Even the treatife of Polidore Virgil, De rerum inventoribus, has, he fays, been of no use to him on account of the fubtleties with which it abounds, its omiffions and inaccuracy. Our Author's work is diftinguished from all others on the fame fubject by the extensiveness of the plan, and the multitude of quotations from the antients, which are printed in the manner of notes, as fo many vouchers for the text. Those from

Greek authors have a Latin tranflation fubjoined. The subftance of the quotations is likewife to be found in the text, where it may be thought our Author fometimes modernizes them too much; that is, tranflates them too freely, in order to accommodate them to modern fyftems.

Mr. Dutens begins his work with an account of Descartes's method of philofophifing, and fhews that even his famous Regula Philofophandia kind of philofophical leading-firings are not of his own, but Ariftotle's manufacture: nay, fuch predilection does Mr. D. fhew for the antients, even at his out-fet, that he is loth to leave a poor modern in the quiet poffeffion even of an abfurdity, but lays in a claim of pre-occupancy for his favourites. Defcartes ridiculously undertook to prove his own exiflence to himself, and gloried in having at last accomplished it, by his famous fyllogifm, cogito, ergo fum; but St. Auguftine, we are here told, had been beforehand with him in the important difcovery of a method of enabling a man to prove this truth by the aid of dialectics.

Defcartes's cat was as fully poffeffed with a belief of her own existence as either the faint or her mafter, though fhe knew not

the

the force of a fyllogifm. All three believed their own existence in fpite of their teeth. Some philofophers have indeed doubted the existence of every thing elfe; but even on that fuppofition, the finest battering train of fyllogifms that ever was brought into the field of metaphyfics, though it were ever fo well ferved, would never be able to demolish their doubts.

Mr. D. next proceeds to fhew how much Locke is indebted to Ariftotle and the Peripatetics, and particularly to the Stoics, as their doctrines are delivered down to us by Sextus Empiricus, Plutarch, and Diogenes Laertius, for his beft notions concerning the manner in which the foul acquires her ideas. Defcartes and Leibnitz are next introduced as having taken the contrary doctrines of innate ideas from Plato. Our Author here and. elsewhere fhews his perfect freedom from any attachment to particular fects or countries-Tros Rutilufve fuat, &c. According to him, Descartes and the other patrons of innate ideas could not even err without the help of Plato; nor Locke, the oppofer of that doctrine, be in the right, if Ariftotle and the Peripatetics had not been in the right before him.

Our Author treats, in his third chapter, of the fenfible qualities of bodies, and traces matters ab ovo ufq. He mounts up to times prior to the Trojan war, and there finds the first rudiments of that extraordinary opinion with which Bishop Berkeley aftonished the modern world, concerning the non-existence of bodies. Mofchus, the Phænician, we are told, laid the foundations of the corpufcular philofophy. After him Democritus began to ftrip bodies of their fenfible qualities; but it was his difciple Protagoras who gave matter the coup de grace, and fairly drove it out of the world: The quotations from Sextus Empiricus, who has delivered down to us the opinions of Protagoras, are very much to the purpose, particularly that in page 53, note b. Γινεται τοινον, κατ' αυτον, τῶν όντων κριτηριον ο άνθρωπος πανία γαρ τα φαινομενα τοις ανθρώποις, και εσιν. Τα δε μηδενι των ανθρωπων φαινομενα, εδε εςιν. Εft ergo, fecundum ipfum, homo criterium rerum quæ funt. Omnia enim, quæ apparent hominibus, etiam Junt: quæ autem nulli hominum apparent, ne funt quidem. [Sext. Empiric. Pyrrhon. Hypotypos. Lib. 1. Sect. 219.] Mr. D. might have taken notice, had it occurred to him, of the striking. conformity between this paffage and the following one of Berkeley: The feveral bodies then, that compofe the frame of the world, have not any fubfiftence without a mind; their effe is to be perceived, or known and as long as they are not perceived by me or any other thinking being, they have no fhadow of exiftence at all. [Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge.]

It is not wandering from the prefent fubject, (though it is foreign to the scope of Mr. D.'s book) to obferve that Dr. Reid, has lately, in his Inquiry into the Human Mind, taken great pains

to

to restore the material world to that exiftence from which it had been excluded by thefe annihilators: but for this purpose he is drove to the neceffity of fetting up a new principle in the mind, by the operation of which, he affirms that a conception and belief of the exiftence of external things immediately and unavoidably follow our fenfations: or, in other words, that our fenfations, though they by no means refemble thofe qualities in bodies which excite them, and accordingly are not at all adapted, of themfelves, to give us notice of external exiftences, and ftill lefs of effecting it by means of images or impreffions of them, as had been fuppofed; yet, by a law of our nature, which is as much a part of our conftitution as the power of thinking, and as inexplicable, they fuggeft to us the exiftence of an external world; and that this faculty, by which we acquire the conception and belief of the existence of a material world is neither fenfation nor reflection, but is different from any power of the human mind hitherto defcribed;-in fact, a kind of innate or original principle, whofe operation is fo fimple that it can only be felt, but can never be explained.-But to return from this digreffion,

Mr. D. next fhews that the phyfical fyftem of Leibnitz is taken from the doctrines of Pythagoras, as they have been delivered down to us by many of the ancients, and more particularly by Sextus Empiricus. As far as a perfon not initiated in the Leibnitzian and Pythagorean myfteries can judge, there feems to be a great conformity between the ancient and modern fyftems, on viewing them brought face to face by our Author. We might judge better if we understood either of them, but we ftumble even at the threshold, and cannot by any effort of the imagination conceive, with Leibnitz, how body, an extended fubftance, can be compofed of monades, or fimple beings, not extended, any more than we can conceive a number not made up of units or fractions of units. Even our Author, who profeffes to havé examined this fyftem with attention, as editor of a new edition of the works of Leibnitz, now in the prefs at Geneva, and who endeavours to give us an account of Leibnitz's manner of conceiving the nature of extenfion, feems to be infected by the fubject. His ufual accuracy and clearness feem to forfake him in the fhort expofition which he gives us of part of this myfterious. fyftem; which is not rendered a whit more comprehenfible by the illuftrative note (at least fo intended) from Madame de Chatelet. That Leibnitz was a great borrower from his cotemporaries has been often afferted, and particularly complained of by our countrymen; but that he was much more obliged to the ancients will probably appear to thofe who understand his phyfical fyftem, and read our Author's proofs. In this chapter we are told, en paffant, what, we believe, Leibnitz owned; that

his famous principle of a fufficient reafon was employed long ago by Archimedes, but our Author might have hinted how far Leibnitz extended it beyond the original inventor; pretending to deduce from thence all the principles of metaphyfics, and by its help annihilating fpace as well as time.-To bring all that relates to Leibnitz under one head,-our Author, in the fecond yolume, fhews, that his fyftem of the beft of all poffible worlds, commonly called optimifm, is all to be found in Plato's Timæus ; and his account of the origin of evil is taken from the famous ftoic philofopher, Chryfippus; of whose book on providence an account has been handed down to us by Aulus Gellius *.

Mr. Buffon is next brought forth and confronted with Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Plautinus, and others, on account of his fuppofed new fyftem of generation and nutrition. A philofophical opinion or fyftem may naturally enough be confidered, especially now we are upon generation, as the child of many fathers, who in diftant or different ages contribute more or lefs towards its formation: at laft a fhrewd obferving modern starts up, who finding the brat naked and unowned, thinks it will do him credit, and accordingly cloathes it and fends it into the world as his own, where he paffes for the true and only father, till an Almeloveen or a Mr. Dutens arifes, who is at the pains to search the old regifters, and finds a father for every limb of jt.To drop the allufion-Mr. Buffon's fyftem is, according to our Author, by no means new. His molecules organiquesthat universal, nutritive and productive matter, common to animals and vegetables, which is always active and tending to organization, has been long ago defcribed by the above-mentioned antients. Our Author cannot find any difference between the two fyftems, except in one particular: Mr. Buffon fuppofes that these organical particles muft penetrate what he calls the moule interieur, or internal mould of the animal or vegetable, there to be affimilated to the parts which they are to form; whereas Anaxagoras fuppofed a specific matter, whofe particles were already adapted, and wanted only an occafion of being united to their respective parts.-No pre-existent germs in either of the fyftems.In both, the active, animated matter, is

That Leibnitz owned and even gloried in his obligations to the antients appears from the following anecdote related by our Author: A certain learned Italian who had fpent three weeks with Leibnitz, was, on his taking leave, thus addreffed by that great man: You have dine me the bononr, Sir, to till me often that I know somewhat. I will show you the fources from whence I have drawn all I know. Then conducting the ftranger into his closet, he fhewed him his collection of books, which confifted only of the works of Plato, Ariftotle, Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus, Euclid, Archimedes, Pliny, Seneca and Cicero.'

never loft or idle: on the corruption or decompofition of one body, it is always ready to form new affemblages of the fame kind.

So far as the fyftem of Mr. Needham on the formation of animals, &c. which our Author next examines, and which was propofed in his Obfervations Microfcopiques, Paris, 1750, refembles that of Mr. de Buffon, (which it does in fome particu Ears) fo far its claim to originality is affected by what goes before. The other opinions of Mr. Needham, particularly his fyftem of fimple agents, endowed with principles of motion and sefiftance, of which, according to him, every combination of matter confifts, are here traced from Pythagoras and Plato. Mr. Needham has himself added fome notes at the bottom of the page, explanatory of his fyftem; but in them he takes no notice of the conformity to the antient fyftems attributed to it by our Author.

In the next chapter, which treats of the corpufcular philofophy and the divifibility of matter, Mr. D. quotes the following propofition from S'Gravefande*, which has, he fays, been confidered by the Newtonians as new: Any particle of matter, how fmall foever, and any finite space, how large foever, being given; it is poffible that the matter of that particle may be diffufed through all that space, and fo fill it, that there fhall be no pore in it, whofe diameter fhall exceed the leaft given line.' Anaxagoras, he tells us, has expreffed the fame propofition almoft in the fame terms; but we are particularly pleafed with the very laconic enunciation of the fame truth, by Democritus, Anμoxpires Onoi, &c. [Stobus Eclog. Phys. lib. 1. p. 33. line 9. edit. fol. 1609.] Democritus, fays Stobæus, affirms that a world may be made out of an atom."

In the following chapter the Author fhews that the accelerated motion of heavy bodies downwards was known to Ariftotle and the Peripatetics, and that Lucretius has anticipated Galileo in the discovery that bodies unequal in weight would fall with equal velocity in vacuo. He next endeavours to prove that the principle of univerfal gravitation, centripetal and centrifugal forces, have been clearly indicated by Anaxagoras, Plato, Ariftotle, Plutarch and Lucretius; and that even Pythagoras was not ignorant that the gravitation of the planets towards the fun was in the inverfe ratio of the fquare of their dif tances. He ftrengthens his affertion with certain acknowledg ments of Gregory and Maclaurin on this fubject, which the reader may confult in Gregor. Aftronom. Element. and Maclaurin's Account of Sir Ifaac Newton's Philos. p. 32.

See Dr. Keil's paper on this fubject, Philof. Tranf. abr. by Motte. Vol. I. p. 46.

The