He dwells with evident fondness on categories or universal forms.All things are to be known by their causes.
The knowledge of first causes belongs to metaphysics.Every thing that is to be known falls under one or other of the categories.He shows that God must have ideas.Man is capable of forming ideas.Time is not a cause, but is a necessary adjunct or concomitant of the material world.If nothing existed, it is evident there could be no such thing as time.His definition of time does not make the subject much clearer, as it introduces the phrase duration, which needs explanation quite as much as time does: " it is the measure of the duration of things that exist in succession by the motion of the celestial bodies.Beings which suffer no change, neither in substance, qualities, nor energies, cannot be in time.Of this kind we conceive Divinity to be, and therefore he is not in time but in eternity." As to space, it is nothing actually, but it is something potentially; for it has the capacity of receiving body, "for which it furnishes room or place." Here it should be observed that room or place comes in to explain space, which is as clear as either room or place, -- which are, in, fact embraced in it." Space has not the capacity of becoming any thing, but only of receiving any thing."He represents Aristotle as saying that the beauty of nature consists in final causes, without which we can conceive no beauty in any thing.In expounding his own views, he tells us that in a single object there may be truth, but no beauty.In order to give beauty to truth, there must be " a system, of which the mind, perceiving the union, is at the same time struck with that most agreeable of all perceptions which we call beauty.And the greater the variety there is in this system, the greater the number of parts, the more various their connections and dependencies upon one another, the greater the beauty, provided the mind can distinctly comprehend the several parts in one united view." There must be some truth here, though it may not be the whole truth.
In vols.iii.and iv.he treats of man.This is the only part of his book fitted to excite an interest in these times." It is surprising," he says, " that so little inquiry has been made concerning {253} the natural history of our own species." He then proceeds to divulge his own theory, which, in some respects, is an anticipation of the Darwinian.He maintains that man was at first a mere animal, that he walked on all fours, and that he possessed a tail, of which we discover the rudiments.There has been a progression in mankind from one stage to higher they erect themselves, they learn the use of their hands, and they learn to swim.They lived first on natural fruits as they presented themselves, and then learned hunting and fishing.
Men were for a time solitary, and then came to herd together.He is not so trustworthy as Darwin in his facts:
he tells us that there is a whole nation of Esquimaux with only one leg; that the one-eyed cyclops of Homer is not a mere fiction; that in Ethiopia men have only one eye, and this in their foreheads and he expresses his belief in mermaids.
