Plotinus, investigating what might be the reason of this sympathy and attraction in nature, discovered it to proceed from such a “harmony and assimilation of the parts, as bound them together when they met,” or repelled them when they were dissimilar; he says, that it is the variety of these assimilations that concurs to the formation of an animal; and calls this binding, or dissolving force, “the magic of the universe.”
Anaxagoras thought as Buffon does, that there is no preexistent seed, involving infinite numbers of the same kind one within another; but an ever active organic matter, always ready so to adapt itself, as to assimilate, and render other things conformable to that wherein it resides. The species of animals and vegetables can never therefore exhaust themselves; but as long as an individual subsists, the species will be always new. It is as extensive now as it was at the beginning, and all will subsist of themselves, till they are annihilated by the Creator.
It would be easy to show, that in morals and politics, as in physics, the most eminent moderns have said nothing new. Hobbes has advanced nothing, but what he found in the writings of the Grecian and Latin philosophers; and above all, in those of Epicurus. Montesquieu also assumes from the ancients the principles of his system; and Machiavel those of his politics from Aristotle, though we have attributed to his genius the whole honour of having invented them. But these discussions would detain the reader too long; we hasten therefore to another field of contemplation, not less fruitful of testimony, in support of the position, that the most celebrated philosophers among the moderns have taken what they advance from the works of the ancients.
[318] Perhaps this principle derives further illustration from scripture. “In the beginning was the Word.” John i, 1. Ed.
For the Table Book.
GRASSHOPPERS.
“Sauter de branche en branche.”
The stream may flow, the wheel may run,
The corn in vain be brown’d in sun,
And bolting-mills, like corks, be stoppers;
Save that their clacks, like noisy rain,
Make floor of corn in root and grain
By virtue of their Hoppers.