ficence, gratitude, piety, and friendship. All of these were enjoined as essential to that tranquillity of mind, which constitutes the highest enjoyment of which our nature is capable. No reference, however, was made by the founder or the followers of this infidel sect to a future state, since present felicity was the only good of which they seemed to have formed any conception.

190. If the preceding summary of the ethical doctrines of the ancient Epicureans be correct (and it is gathered from their own writings), it will be perceived, that it was not in itself that licentious system which many have imagined, or which it was represented to be by the advocates of other rival systems. It rests, indeed, wholly on the selfish principle; it urges no motives but those which are drawn from the desire of self gratification: but, as Dr. Enfield has justly observed, "it differs from the rigid system of the Stoics more in words than in reality; both maintained that virtue is happiness, though the one considered it but as a means, and the other as the end; the one represented happiness as the necessary result and infallible reward of virtue, while the other exhibited it as the grand motive to its habitual exercise." But whatever may have been the moral system of Epicurus, it is certain that the latter philosophers of his sect justified every species of crime, which promised present enjoyment; and that the system degenerated, in the more luxurious and corrupt periods of Grecian and Roman history, into habits of the grossest sensuality and volup

tuousness.

SECTION VI.

ON THE ETHICAL SYSTEM of tHE ECLECTICS.

191. A BRIEF account has been given, in a former section, of the rise of the Eclectic sect at Alexandria, about the commencement of the third century, and an outline presented of the metaphysical speculations of the principal philosophers of that school. Before we close our review of the moral systems of antiquity, it is requisite to advert to that of the Eclectics. Here, however, it will be necessary to distinguish between the moral doctrines of those Alexandrian philosophers, who had embraced Christianity, and were of course familiar with the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, (of which number were Origen, Clemens Alexandrinus, and several others of the Greek fathers,) and those who still adhered to paganism, and were, in some instances, the bitterest and most determined enemies of the christian faith. The ethical doctrines, found in the writings of the first of these classes, may be considered as a somewhat adulterated species of christian morality. They were the precepts of revelation corrupted and debased by being amalgated with the Ammonian philosophy; on the other hand, those of the second class were the ethics of Plato, Pythagoras, Zoroaster, or Confucius, elevated, and in some degree purified, by having been brought into contact with the christian revelation. For, however inveterate may have been the enmity of Celsus, Porphyry, and other infidels of ancient or modern

times, against the gospel, it will be found that they derived their best moral maxims and rules of virtuous conduct from those very Scriptures, which they affected to despise as cunningly devised fables.

192. The following sketch of the ethical opinions of the Eclectic philosophers has been collected by Dr. Enfield, chiefly from the writings of Porphyry, and may suffice, though brief, for our present purpose.

"The mind of man, originally a portion of the divine nature, having fallen into a state of darkness and defilement by its union with the body, is to be gradually emancipated from the chain of matter, and, by contemplating real existences, to rise to the knowledge and vision of God. The great end of philosophy is, therefore, the liberation of the soul from its corporeal imprisonment. This can only be effected by the practice of virtue. For this purpose it must pass through the several stages of the human and divine virtues. Human virtues are either physical, œconomical, or political; that is, they either relate to the body, or to the offices of domestic and social life. The divine virtues are of three kinds, purgative, theoretic, and theurgic; the first consists in bodily abstinence and voluntary mortifications; the second includes all those exercises of the intellect and imagination, by which the mind contemplates abstract truth and intelligible natures; the third includes those religious exercises by which the philosopher is qualified for, and admitted to, an immediate intercourse with the superior beings, attains a power over dæmons, and rises so far above the ordi

nary condition of humanity, as to enjoy the vision of God in this life, and to return at death to the divine mind whence it first proceeded."

193. Nor was this moral system merely speculative. The principal founders of the Eclectic sect inculcated on their disciples the practical observance of their didactic rules. They required of them to submit to many acts of self-denial and bodily mortification, as evidences of their supposed piety and elevated virtue. The mass of the people might follow the dictates of nature, or become the slaves of their animal appetites; but philosophers were expected to be more sublimated in their dispositions and habits. They were, by the aid of meditation, to rise above all terrestrial things, and commune with the world of spirits. They were, by frequent fastings and voluntary privations and sufferings, to subjugate the body, in order that the emancipated spirit might, even in the present state of existence, be so purified and refined, as to hold communion with the Deity, to converse with invisible existences, and, by their aid, to perform many wonderful works. This was the substance of that mystical theory which was communicated to the initiated, under the name of the theurgic art; which was evidently derived from oriental systems of philosophy, and which, combined with the profession of christianity, produced, in subsequent ages, myriads of monks and ascetics, and led to all the rigorous austerities of popish devotees.

PART III.

THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY & SCIENCE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

SECT. I.

CAUSES OF THE DECAY OF LITERATURE.

194. THE portion of time usually designated "the middle ages," includes a space of not less than a thousand years, extending from the dismemberment and subversion of the gigantic empire of Rome, which took place towards the close of the fifth century, to the revival of letters, which occurred about the end of the fifteenth century, and constitutes the most memorable æra in the history of the human mind. However fraught this long interval may have been with political revolutions, by which ancient dynasties were overthrown, the face of Europe and Asia changed, and the state of society, throughout the world, materially affected; to the intellectual inquirer, whose object it is to mark the operations of mind, and the progress of knowledge, it presents little more than a barren and dreary waste. Of the first five centuries, scarcely any

R