Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/343

 that those sublime Truths were debased when the unlearned part of Mankind have been the better for them. And therefore, as Plutarch complains in his Life of Marcellus, Mechanical Arts were despised by Geometers till Archimedes's Time: Now though this be particularly spoken there by Plutarch of the making of Instruments of Defence and Offence in War, yet it is also applicable to all the Ancient Philosophy and Mathematicks in general. The old Philosophers seemed still to be afraid that the common People should despise their Arts if commonly understood; this made them keep for the most Part to those Studies which required few Hands and Mechanical Tools to compleat them: Which to any Man that has a right Notion of the Extent of a natural Philosopher's Work, will appear absolutely necessary. Above all, the Ancients did not seem sufficiently to understand the Connection between Mathematical Proportions of Lines and Solids, in an abstracted Proposition, and in every Part of the Creation; at least in their reasonings about the Causes of Natural Things, they did not take any great pains to shew it. When Galen was to give an Account of Vision in his Books (c) De Usu Partium, because he