Part 6

Marcus Tullius Cicero—the same that has been already mentioned. He was, himself, not only one of the most learned and eloquent men, but one of the greatest philosophers, of antiquity. This illustrious Roman (whose death occurred forty-three years before the Christian era) firmly believed in the being of a God. He was likewise a decided advocate for the doctrine of the soul’s immortality; concerning which, some fine reasoning will be found in his book on Old Age;—a doctrine, however, by no means confined to Cicero alone, but one maintained by many of the most eminent among the heathen philosophers, in the early ages. Plato appears to have been the first who supported that opinion upon sound and permanent arguments, deduced from truth and established principles.

Footnote 15:

Cicero himself says, “If any one doubt, whether there be a God, I cannot comprehend why the same person may not as well doubt, whether there be a sun or not.” [De Naturâ Deorum, 2. 2.]

It is observed by Dr. Turnbull, in his annotations on Heineccius’s System of Universal Law, that Polybius as well as Cicero, and indeed almost all the ancient philosophers, have acknowledged, that a public sense of Religion is necessary to the well-being and support of civil society: and such a sentiment of Religion is inseparable from a reasonable conception of the being and attributes of the Deity. “Society,” says Dr. Turnbull very truly, “can hardly subsist without it: or, at least, it is the most powerful mean for restraining from vice; and for promoting and upholding those virtues by which society subsists, and without which every thing that is great and comely in society must soon perish and go to ruin.”—“With regard to private persons,” continues this learned writer, “he who does not often employ his mind in reviewing the perfections of the Deity, and in consoling and strengthening his mind by the comfortable and mind-exalting reflexions, to which meditation upon the universal providence of an all-perfect mind, naturally, and as it were, necessarily lead, deprives himself of the greatest joy, the noblest exercise and entertainment, the human mind is capable of; and whatever obligations there may to virtue, he cannot be so firm, steady, and unshaken in his adherence to it, as he, who, being persuaded of the truth just mentioned, is daily drawing virtuous strength and comfort from it.” [See the Annotator’s remark on ch. v. b. i. of Heineccius.]

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Great were, undoubtedly, the improvements in astronomy, made by the Greek philosophers of early ages, on such of its rudiments as were handed down to them from those nations by whom it was first cultivated: Yet it can scarcely be conceived, that, until the celebrated Euclid of Alexandria, and his followers, had reduced the mathematics of Thales and others of those philosophers, into regular systems of arithmetical and geometrical science, the true principles of astronomy could be ascertained. In fact, seventeen centuries and an half had elapsed, from the time of that great geometrician, before Copernicus appeared: when this wonderful genius, availing himself of such remnants of the ancient philosophy, as the intervening irruptions of the barbarous nations of the north upon the then civilized world had left to their posterity, opened to the view of mankind the real system of the universe.—So vast was the chasm, during which the nobler branches of physics remained uncultivated and neglected, that, from the age of Euclid, fourteen centuries passed away, before Roger Bacon, an English Franciscan friar, began his successful enquiries into experimental philosophy.—This extraordinary man is said to have been almost the only astronomer of his age; and he himself tells us, that there were not, then, more than three or four persons in the world who had made any considerable proficiency in the mathematics!

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Footnote 16:

The Greeks derived their knowledge of astronomy from the Egyptians and Chaldeans. According to Plutarch, the sciences began to unfold themselves about the time of Hesiod, the Greek poet, who flourished upwards of nine centuries before the Christian era; but their progress was very slow, until the time of Thales, which was about three centuries later. And although this celebrated philosopher of antiquity rendered himself famous by foretelling an eclipse of the sun, he only predicted the year in which it was to happen. Even this, it is remarked by Mr. Vince (in his invaluable work, entitled, A Complete System of Astronomy,) he was probably enabled to do by the Chaldean Saros, a period of 223 lunations; after which, the eclipses return again nearly in the same order. Philolaus, a disciple of Pythagoras, lived about four hundred and fifty years before Christ, and is said to have taught the true solar system,—placing the sun in the centre, with the earth and all the planets revolving about it; a system which, it is believed, Pythogaras himself had conceived, and was inclined to adopt.

However, Hipparchus, who lived between one hundred and twenty-five and one hundred and sixty years before the Christian era, and whom Mr. Vince styles “the Father of Astronomy,” was the first person that cultivated every part of that science. His discoveries, together with those of Ptolemy, are preserved in the Μεγαλη Σύνταξις, or Great Construction,—Ptolemy’s celebrated work on Astronomy, named by the Arabs the Almagest, and now usually so called.

Footnote 17:

This great philosopher of antiquity, so justly entitled to celebrity for his mathematical works, flourished three hundred years before the Christian era. Care should be taken not to confound him with Euclid of Megara, who lived a century earlier. The latter, as the Abbé Barthelemi observes, being too much familiarized with the writings of Parmenides and the Elean school, had recourse to abstractions; “a method,” says the Abbé, “often dangerous, oftener unintelligible.” Just after, he adds: “The subtleties of metaphysics calling to their aid the quirks of logic, words presently took place of things, and students acquired nothing in the schools but a spirit of acrimony and contradiction.” Travels of the younger Anacharsis, vol. iii. chap. 37.

Footnote 18:

That the sun is at rest, and that the planets revolve round him, is an opinion that appears to have been received of old, by Philolaus, Aristarchus of Samos, and the whole sect of the Pythagoreans. It is probable, as Mr. Rowning observes, that this notion was derived from them, by the Greeks: But the opinion that the sun stood still in the centre, while the whole heavens moved around it, was the prevailing one, until Copernicus, by the establishment of his system, restored the ancient astronomy of the Pythagorean school.

Footnote 18a:

In his Compendious System of Natural Philosophy.

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But after the appearance of Copernicus, succeeded by the ingenious Tycho Brahe and sagacious Kepler, arose the learned physiologist Bacon, Viscount of St. Albans,—one of the most illustrious contributors to the yet scanty stock of experimental philosophy. And soon after, in the same age and nation, was manifested to the world, in the full glory of meridian splendour, that great luminary of natural science, who first enlightened mankind by diffusing among them the rays of well-ascertained truths; clearly exhibiting to all, those fundamental principles of the laws of nature, by which the grand, the stupendous system of the material universe is both sustained and governed:—

“Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in night; God said, Let NEWTON be,—and all was Light.”

Finally, it was reserved for our own age and country to derive dignity and fame, from having given birth to an illustrious successor and disciple of that immortal man, in the person of the yet recently-departed RITTENHOUSE.

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Footnote 19:

Nicholas Copernic (usually latinized, by adding the terminating syllable, us,) that celebrated astronomer, “whose vast genius, assisted by such lights as the remains of antiquity afforded him, explained the true system of the universe, as at present understood,” was born at Thorn in Royal Prussia, the 19th of January, 1442. He was alike distinguished for his piety and innocence, as for his extraordinary genius and discoveries. He died in the seventy-seventh year of his age.

Footnote 19a:

Ritt. Orat.

Footnote 20:

This great man was a native of Knudsturp, a province of Scania in Denmark, and born the 18th of December, 1546, of an illustrious family. He was the first, who, by the accuracy and number of his observations, made the way for the revival of astronomy among the moderns; although, “in theory,” as Rittenhouse has expressed it, “he mangled the beautiful system of Copernicus.”—Brahé (for this is the family-name) died at the age of fifty-five years.

Footnote 20a: