Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/342

 How much these Four Things will enlarge Natural Philosophy is easie to guess. I do not say that none of these things were anciently done; but only that they were not then so general. The Corpuscular Philosophy is in all Probability the oldest, and its Principles are those intelligible ones I just now commended. But its Foundations being very large, and requiring much Time, Cost, and Patience to build any great Matters upon, it soon fell; before it seems to have been throughly understood. For it seems evident, That Epicurus minded nothing but the raising of a Sect, which might talk as plausibly as those of Aristotle, or Plato, since he despised all Manner of Learning, even Mathematicks themselves, and gloried in this, that he spun all his Thoughts out of his own Brain; a good Argument of his Wit indeed, but a very ordinary one of that Skill in Nature, which Lucretius extols in him every time that he takes Occasion to speak of him. The whole Ancient Philosophy looks like a thing of Ostentation and Pomp, otherwise I cannot understand why Plato should reprove Eudoxus and Archytas, for trying to make their Skill in Geometry useful in Matters of civil Life, by inventing of Instruments of publick Advantage; or think