Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/132

 150 years, there is no proof that they have outgrown all that was ancient.]

[ibid. pp. 468–477]

But what are the sciences wherein we pretend to excel? I know of no new philosophers, that have made entries upon that noble stage for fifteen hundred years past, unless Descartes and Hobbes should pretend to it; of whom I shall make no critique here, but only say that by what appears of learned men's opinions in this age, they have by no means eclipsed the lustre of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, or others of the ancients. For grammar or rhetoric, no man ever disputed it with them; nor for poetry, that ever I heard of, besides the new French author I have mentioned; and against whose opinion there could, I think, never have been given stronger evidence, than by his own poems printed together with that treatise.

There is nothing new in astronomy, to vie with the ancients, unless it be the Copernican system; nor in physic, unless Harvey's circulation of the blood. But whether either of these be modern discoveries, or derived from old fountains, is disputed: nay, it is so