ELG

INTRODUCTION.

The tracts contained in this small volume will, I trust, be read with considerable interest by every English reader who loves ancient learning. Whatever innovations may have been made in the philosophical theories of the ancients by the accumulated experiments of the moderns, I am persuaded that the scientific deductions of the former will ultimately predominate over the futile and ever-varying conclusions of the latter. For science, truly so called, is, as Aristotle accurately defines it, the knowledge of things eternal which have a necessary existence. Hence, it is based upon universals, not particulars; since the former are definite, immutable, and real, while the latter are indefinite, so incessantly changing that they are never the same for a moment, and are so destitute of reality that, in the language of the great Plotinus, they may be