the sensible world, there is also an intelligible world; that the mind of man is equally connected with both, though the latter cannot possibly be discerned by corporeal organs; and that, as the mind perceives and reasons upon sensible objects by means of sensible archetypes or ideas, so it perceives and reasons upon intelligible objects by means of intelligible ideas. I The only essential variation from this hypothesis which Aristotle appears to have introduced into his own, consists in his having clothed, if may be allowed the expression, the naked ideas of Plato, with the actual qualities of the objects perceived; his doctrine being, that the sense, on perceiving or being excited by an external object, conveys to the mind a real resemblance of it; which, however, though possessing form, colour, and other qualities of matter, is not matter itself, but an insubstantial image, like the picture in a mirror; as though the mind itself were a kind of mirror, and had a power of reflecting the image of whatever object is presented to the external senses. This insubstantial image or picture, in order to distinguish it from the intellectual pattern or idea of Plato, he denominated a phantasm. And as he supported with Plato the existence of an intelligible as well as of a sensible world, it was another part of his hypothesis that, while things sensible are perceived by sensible phantasms, things intelligible are perceived by intelligible phantasms; and consequently that virtue and vice, truth and falsehood, time, space and numbers, have all their pictures and phantasms, as well as plants, houses, and animals. Epicurus admitted a part of this hypothesis, and taught it contemporaneously at Mitylene, but the greater part he openly opposed and ridiculed. He concurred in the doctrine that the mind perceives sensible objects by means of sensible images; but he contended that those images are as strictly material as the objects from which they emanate; and that if we allow them to possess material qualities, we must necessarily allow them at the same time to possess the substance to which such qualities appertain. Epicurus, therefore, believed the perceptions of the mind to be real and substantial effigies, and to these effigies he gave the name of x, (idola) or SPECIES, in contradistinction to the insubstantial PHANTASMS of Aristotle, and the intellectual or formative IDEAS of Plato. He maintained that all external objects are perpetually throwing off fine alternate waves of different flavours, odours, colours, shapes, and other qualities; which, by striking against their appropriate senses, excite in the senses themselves a perception of the qualities and presence of the parent object; and are immediately conveyed by the sentient channel to the chamber of the mind, or sensory, without any injury to their texture: in the same manner as heat, light, and magnetism pervade solid substances, and still retain their integrity. And he affirmed further that, instead of the existence of an imaginary, intelligible world, throwing off intelligible images, it is from the sensible or material world alone that the mind, by the exercise of its proper faculties, in union with that of the corporeal senses, derives every branch of knowledge, physical, moral, or mathematical. If this view of the abstruse subject before us be correct, as I flatter myself it is, I may recapitulate in few words, that the external perceptions of the mind are, according to Plato, the primitive or intellectual patterns from which the forms and other qualities of objects have been taken; according to Aristotle, insubstantial pictures of them, as though reflected from a mirror; and, according to Epicurus, substantial or material effigies: such perceptions being under the first view of them denominated IDEAS; under the second, PHANTASMS; under the third, idola, or SPECIES. While such were the fixed and promulgated tenets of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, there were other philosophers of Greece, or who at least have been so denominated, that openly professed themselves to be without tenets of any kind; who declared that nothing was known or could be known upon any subject; and who, consequently, inculcated an universal scepticism. Of this delirious class of disputants, who were suffered to wander at large without a strait waistcoat, there are two that are pre-eminently entitled to our attention, Pyrrho and Arcesilas. Pyrrho studied first in the atomic school of Democritus, and seems to have lost his senses upon the question of the infinite divisibility of matter, a question which has not unfrequently given birth to the same disease in modern times. He first doubted the solidity of its elementary atoms, he next found out, that if these be not solid, every thing slips away from the fingers in a moment the external world becomes a mere show and there is no truth or solidity in any thing. He was not able to prove the solidity of the elementary atoms of matter. He hence doubted of every thing; advised all the world to do the same; and established a school for the purpose of inculcating this strange doctrine. In every other respect he was a man of distinguished accomplishments, and so highly esteemed by his countrymen, as to have been honoured with the dignity of chief priest, and exempted from public taxation. But, to such a formidable extreme did this disease of scepticism carry him, that one or more of his friends, as we are gravely told in history, were obliged to accompany him whereever he went, that he might not be run over by carriages, or fall down precipices. Yet he contrived, by some means or other, to live longer than most men of caution and common sense; for we find him at last dying of a natural death, at the good old age of ninety. Arcesilas was one of the successors to Plato in the academic chair, and founder of the school that has been known by the name of the MIDDLE ACADEMY. Plato, in his fondness for intellectual IDEAS, those creatures of his own imagination, had always given a much greater degree of credit to their testimony than to that of the objects which compose the material world; believing that the mind was less likely to be imposed upon than the external senses. And with so much zeal was this feeling or prejudice followed up by Arcesilas, that he soon began to doubt, and advised his scholars to doubt also, of the reality of every thing they saw about them; and at length terminated his doubts in questioning the competency of reason itself to decide upon any evidence the external senses might produce, though he admitted an external world of some kind or other. And upon being reminded, by one of his scholars, who had a wish to please him, that the only thing which Socrates declared he was certain of was his own ignorance, he immediately replied, that Socrates had no right to say even that -for that no man could be certain of any thing. It was against this unhappy madman, though in other respects, like Pyrrho, excellent and accomplished scholar, that Lucretius directed those forcible verses in favour of the truth and testimony of the senses, as the only genuine means of acquiring knowledge, which have been so often referred to, and so warmly commended in the controversy of the present day: Who holds that nought is known, denies he knows |