Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/154

 Discoveries that were made in Geometry, were made by the Egyptians afterwards; or, which is more probable, they were Grecian Superstructures upon those Foundations. Besides, though a Man travelled into Egypt, yet it does not follow from thence that he learnt all his Knowledge there. So that though Archimedes and Euclid were in Egypt, yet they might, for all that, have been Inventors themselves of those noble Theorems which are in their Writings. In Archimedes's Time Greeks lived in Alexandria; and the Learning of Egypt could no more at that time be attributed to the old Egyptians, than the Learning of Archbishop Usher, Sir James Ware, and Mr. Dodwell, can be attributed to a Succession of those learned Irish-men who were so considerable in the Saxon Times.

This last Consideration is of very great Moment; for few of the Greeks, after Plato, went into Egypt purely for Knowledge: and though Plato brought several of his Notions out of Egypt, which he interwove into his Philosophy, yet the Philosophers of the Alexandrian School, who, for the most part, were Platonists, shew by their Way of Writing, and by their frequent Citations out of Plato's Books, that they chose to take those