rules of. See NEWTONIAN Philosophy, no 16. and the following article.

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**PHILOSOPHY**

Is a word derived from the Greek, and literally signifies the love of wisdom (A). In its usual acceptation, however, it denotes a science, or collection of sciences, of which the universe is the object; and of the term thus employed many definitions have been given, differing from one another according to the different views of their several authors. By Pythagoras, philosophy is defined ἐπιστήμη τῶν ὅλων, "the knowledge of things existing;" by Cicero, after Plato, scientia rerum divinarum et humanarum cum causis; and by the illustrious Bacon, interpretatio naturae. Whether any of these definitions are sufficiently precise, and at the same time sufficiently comprehensive, History of may be questioned; but if philosophy in its utmost extent be capable of being adequately defined, it is not here that the definition should be given. "Explanation (says an acute writer *), is the first of Tatham's Chart and Scale of Truth, v. i. face of a teacher; definition, if it be good, is the last of the inquirer after truth; but explanation is one thing, and definition quite another." It may be proper, however, to observe, that the definition given by Cicero is better than that of Pythagoras, because the chief object of the philosopher is to ascertain the causes of things; and in this consists the difference between

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(A) The origin usually attributed to the term philosophy has been already assigned in the article PHILOLOGY. M. Chauvin gives it a turn somewhat different. According to him, the term is derived from φιλος, desire or study, and σοφια, wisdom; and therefore he understands the word to mean the desire or study of wisdom; for (says he) Pythagoras, conceiving that the application of the human mind ought rather to be called study than science, set aside the appellation of wise as too affluming, and took that of philosopher. The principal objects of philosophy are, God, nature, and man. That part of it which treats of God is called theology; that which treats of nature, physics and metaphysics; and that which treats of man, logic and ethics.

These are not separate and independent sciences, but, as Bacon expresses it (ii), branches from the same trunk, we shall endeavour to show, after we have given, agreeably to our usual plan, a short history of philosophy from the earliest ages to the present day.

To attempt to assign an origin to philosophy, would be ridiculous; for every man endeavours to ascertain the causes of those changes which he observes in nature; and even children themselves are inquisitive after that which produces the sound of their drums and their rattles. Children, therefore, and the most illiterate vulgar, have in all ages been philosophers. But the first people among whom philosophy was cultivated as a profession, was probably the Chaldeans. We certainly read of none earlier; for though we have more authentic accounts of the Hebrews than of any other nation of remote antiquity, and have reason to believe that no people was civilized before them, yet the peculiar circumstances in which they were placed, rendered all philosophical investigation to them useless, and even tended to suppress the very spirit of inquiry. The Egyptians indeed pretended to be the first of nations, and to have spread the blessings of religion and the light of science among every other people; but, from the earliest records now extant, there is reason to believe that the Chaldeans were a civilized and powerful nation before the Egyptian monarchy was founded.

Of the Chaldean philosophy much has been said, but very little is known. Astronomy seems to have been their favourite study; and at the era of Alexander's conquest of their country, they boasted that their ancestors had continued their astronomical observations through a period of 470,000 years. Extravagant claims to antiquity have been common in all nations (c). Caliphenes, who attended the Macedonian conqueror, was requested by Aristotle to inform himself concerning the origin of science in Chaldea; and upon examining into the grounds of this report, he found that their observations reached no farther backwards than 1903 years, or 2234 years before the Christian era. Even this is a remoter antiquity than Ptolemy allows to their science; for he mentions no Chaldean observations prior to the era of Nabonassar, or 747 years before Christ. That they cultivated something which they called philosophy at a much earlier period than this, cannot be questioned; for Aristotle, on the credit of the most ancient records, speaks of the Chaldean magi as prior to the Egyptian priests, who were certainly men of learning before the time of Moses. For any other science than that of the stars, we do not read that the Chaldeans were famous; and this seems to have been cultivated by them merely as the foundation of judicial astrology. Perceiving the multitude that all human affairs are influenced by the stars, and professing to be acquainted with the nature and laws of this influence, their wise men pretended to calculate nativities, and to predict good and bad fortune. This was the source of idolatry and various superstitions; and whilst the Chaldeans were given up to such dotages, true science could not be much indebted to their labours. If any credit be due to Plutarch and Vitruvius, who quote Berosus, (see Berosus), it was the opinion of the Chaldean wise men that an eclipse of the moon happens when that part of its body which is destitute of fire is turned towards the earth. "Their cosmogony, as given by Berosus, and preserved by Syncellus, seems to be this, that all things in the beginning consisted of darkness and water; that a divine power dividing this humid mass, formed the world; and that the human mind is an emanation from the Divine nature."

The large tract of country which comprehended the empires of Assyria and Chaldea, was the first peopled region on earth. From that country, therefore, the rudiments of science must have been propagated in every direction through the rest of the world; but what particular people made the earliest figure, after the Chaldeans, in the history of philosophy, cannot be certainly known. The claim of the Egyptians is probably well founded; but as their science was the immediate source of that of the Greeks, we shall defer what we have to say of it on account of the connection between the parent and the offspring, and turn our attention from Chaldean to Indian philosophy, as it has been cultivated from a very early period by the Brachmans and Gymnosophists. We pass over Persia, because we know not of any science peculiar to that kingdom, except the doctrines of the magi, which were religious rather than philosophical; and of them the reader will find some account under the words MAGI, POLYTHEISM, and ZOROASTER.

From whatever quarter India received its wisdom, we are certain that its philosophers were held in high repute at a period of very remote antiquity, since they were visited by Pythagoras and other sages of ancient Greece, who travelled in pursuit of knowledge. Yet they seem to have been in that early age, as well as at present, more distinguished for the severity of their manners than for the acquisition of science; and, as Dr Enfield observes, to have more resembled modern monks than ancient

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(b) Convenit igitur partiri philosophiam in doctrinas tres; doctrinam de numine, doctrinam de natura, doctrinam de homine. Quoniam autem partitiones scientiarum non sunt lineis diversis similes, quae coeunt ad unum angulum; sed potius ramis arborum, qui conjunguntur in uno trunco, qui etiam trunco ad spatium nonnullum integer est et continuus, antequam se partatur in ramos. De aug. Scient. lib. iii. cap. i.

(c) This claim of the Babylonians is thus rejected with contempt by Cicero; "Contemnamus Babylonios, et eos, qui è Caucaso cœli signa servantes, numeris, et motibus, stellarum cursus persequiuntur; Condemnemus, inquam, hos aut juflicitiae, aut vanitatis, aut imprudentiae, qui 470 millia annorum, ut ipsi dicunt, monumentis comprehensa continent, et mentiri judicamus, nec seculorum reliquorum judicium, quod de ipsis futurum sit, pertimescere. De Divinatione, lib. i. § 19. The philosophy of the Indians has indeed from the beginning been engrained on their religious dogmas, and seems to be a compound of fantastic metaphysics and extravagant superstition, without the smallest foundation of rational physics. Very unlike the philosophers of modern Europe, of whom a great part labour to exclude the agency of mind from the universe, the Pandits of Hindoostan allow no powers whatever to matter, but introduce the Supreme Being as the immediate cause of every effect, however trivial. "Brehm, the Spirit of God," (says one of their most revered Brahmins), is absorbed in self-contemplation. The same is the mighty Lord, who is present in every part of space, whose omnipresence, as expressed in the Rig Veda or Rigveda, I shall now explain. Brehm is one, and to him there is no second; such is truly Brehm. His omniscience is self-inspired or self-intelligent, and its comprehension includes every possible species. To illustrate this as far as I am able; the most comprehensive of all comprehensive faculties is omniscience; and being self-inspired, it is subject to none of the accidents of mortality, conception, birth, growth, decay, or death; neither is it subject to passion or vice. To it the three distinctions of time, past, present, and future, are not. To it the three modes of being (d) are not. It is separated from the universe, and independent of all. This omniscience is named Brehm. By this omniscient Spirit the operations of God are enlivened. By this Spirit also the 24 powers (e) of nature are animated. How is this? As the eye by the sun, as the pot by the fire, as iron by the magnet (f), as variety of imitations by the mimic, as fire by the fuel, as the shadow by the man, as dust by the wind, as the arrow by the spring of the bow, and as the shade by the tree; so by this Spirit the world is ended with the powers of intellect, the powers of the will, and the powers of action: so that if it emanates from the heart by the channel of the ear, it causes the perception of sounds; if it emanates from the heart by the channel of the skin, it causes the perception of touch; if it emanates from the heart by the channel of the eye, it causes the perception of visible objects; if it emanates from the heart by the channel of the tongue, it causes the perception of taste; if it emanates from the heart by the channel of the nose, it causes the perception of smell. This also invigorating the five members of action, and invigorating the five members of perception, and invigorating the five elements, and invigorating the five senses, and invigorating the three dispositions of the mind, &c., causes the creation or the annihilation of the universe, while itself beholds everything as an indifferent spectator.*

From this passage it is plain that all the motions in the universe, and all the perceptions of man, are according to the Brahmins, caused by the immediate agency of the Spirit of God, which seems to be here considered as the soul of the world. But it appears admits not from some papers in the Asiatic Researches, that the most profound of these oriental philosophers, and even the authors of their sacred books, believe not in the existence of matter as a separate substance, but hold an opinion respecting it very similar to that of the celebrated Berkeley. The Vedantists (says Sir William Jones), unable to form a distinct idea of brute matter independent of mind, or to conceive that the work of Supreme Goodness was left a moment to itself, imagine that the Deity is ever present to his work, and constantly supports a series of perceptions, which in one sense they call illusory, though they cannot but admit the reality of all created forms, as far as the happiness of creatures can be affected by them.

This is the very immaterialism of Berkeley; and in proof that it is the genuine doctrine of the Brahmins, the learned president quotes the Bhagavat, which is believed to have been pronounced by the Supreme Being, and in which is the following sentence.

"Except the first cause, whatever may appear, and may not appear, in the mind, know that to be the mind's Maya, or 'delusion,' as light, as darkness."

We have shown elsewhere (see Metaphysics, No. 269.) that the metaphysical doctrines of the Brahmins, reflecting the human soul, differ not from those of Pythagoras and Plato; and that they believe it to be an emanation from the great soul of the world, which, after many transmigrations, will be finally absorbed in its parent substance. In proof of their believing in the metaphysicalosophos, Mr Halhed gives us the following translation of what (he says) is a beautiful stanza in the Geeta: "As throwing aside his old clothes, a man puts on others that are new; so our lives, quitting the old, go to other newer animals."

From the Brahmins believing in the soul of the world Physics of not only as the sole agent, but as the immediate cause of the Brahmans, every motion in nature, we can hardly suppose them

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(d) To be awake, to sleep, and to be absorbed in a state of unconsciousness—a kind of trance.

(e) The 24 powers of nature, according to the Brahmins, are the five elements, fire, air, earth, water, and akasa (a kind of subtle ether); the five members of action, the hand, foot, tongue, anus, and male organ of generation; the five organs of perception, the ear, eye, nose, mouth, and skin; the five senses, which they distinguish from the organs of sensation; the three dispositions of the mind, desire, passion, and tranquillity; and the power of consciousness.

(f) If the work from which this extract is quoted be of as great antiquity as Mr Halhed supposes, the Brahmins must have been acquainted with the phenomena of magnetism at a much earlier period than any other philosophers of whom history makes mention. to have made any great progress in that science which in Europe is cultivated under the name of physics. They have no inducement to investigate the laws of nature; because, according to the first principles of their philosophy, which, together with their religion, they believe to have been revealed from heaven, every phenomenon, however regular, or however anomalous, is produced by the voluntary act of an intelligent mind. Yet if they were acquainted with the use of firearms 4000 years ago, as Mr Halhed seems to believe, he who made that discovery must have had a very considerable knowledge of the powers of nature; for though gunpowder may have been discovered by accident in the East, as it certainly was in the West many ages afterwards, it is difficult to conceive how mere accident could have led any man to the invention of a gun. In astronomy, geometry, and chronology too, they appear to have made some proficiency at a very early period. (See Astronomy, No. 4.) Their chronology and astronomy are indeed full of those extravagant fictions which seem to be essential to all their systems; but their calculation of eclipses, and their computations of time, are conducted upon scientific principles.

"It is sufficiently known (says Mr Davis) that the Hindoo division of the ecliptic into signs, degrees, &c. is the same as ours; that their astronomical year is sidereal, or containing that space of time in which the sun, departing from a star, returns to the same; that it commences on the instant of his entering the sign Aries, or rather the Hindoo constellation Melha; that each astronomical month contains as many even days and fractional parts as he stays in each sign; and that the civil differs from the astronomical account of time only in rejecting those fractions, and beginning the year and month at sunrise, instead of the intermediate instant of the artificial day or night. Hence arises the unequal portion of time assigned to each month dependent on the situation of the sun's apsis, and the distance of the vernal equinoctial colure from the beginning of Melha in the Hindoo sphere; and by these means they avoid those errors which Europeans, from a different method of adjusting their calendar by intercalary days, have been subject to."

Mr Davis observes, that an explanation of these matters would have led him beyond his purpose, which was only to give a general account of the method by which the Hindoos compute eclipses, and to show that the science of astronomy is as well known among them now as ever it was among their ancestors. This he does very completely; but in the present short historical sketch, we can neither copy nor abridge his memoir. Suffice it to say, that he has shown the practical part of the Hindoo astronomy to be founded on mathematical principles; and that the learned Pandits appear to have truer notions of the form of the earth, and the economy of the universe, than those which are ascribed to their countrymen in general.

The same writer shows likewise, that the prodigious duration which the Hindoos attribute to the world, is the result of a scientific calculation, founded indeed on very whimsical principles. "It has been common with astronomers to fix on some epoch, from which, as from a radix, to compute the planetary motions; and the ancient Hindoos chose that point of time counted back, when, according to their motions as they had determined them, they must have been in conjunction in the beginning of Melha or Aries, and coeval with which circumstance they supposed the creation. This, as it concerned the planets only, would have produced a moderate term of years compared with the enormous antiquity that will be hereafter stated: but having discovered a slow motion of the nodes and apsides also, and taken it into the computation, they found it would require a length of time corresponding with 195,884,800 years now expired, when they were situated, and 236,411,511 years more before they would return to the same situation again, forming together the grand anomalistic period denominated a Calpa, and fancifully assigned as the day of Brahma."

But though the mathematical part of the astronomy of the Pandits is undoubtedly respectable, their physical notions of the universe are in the highest degree ridiculous and extravagant. In the Vedas and Puranas, writings of which no devout Hindoo can dispute the divine authority, eclipses are said to be occasioned by the intervention of the monster Rahu; and the earth to be supported by a series of animals. "They suppose (says Mr Halhed) that there are 14 spheres, seven below and six above the earth. The seven inferior worlds are said to be altogether inhabited by an infinite variety of serpents, described in every monstrous figure that the imagination can suggest. The first sphere above the earth is the immediate vault of the visible heavens, in which the sun, moon, and stars, are placed. The second is the first paradise, and general receptacle of those who merit a removal from the lower earth. The third and fourth are inhabited by the souls of those men who, by the practice of virtue and dint of prayer, have acquired an extraordinary degree of sanctity. The fifth is the reward of those who have all their lives performed some wonderful act of penance and mortification, or who have died martyrs for their religion. The highest sphere is the residence of Brahma and his particular favourites, such as those men who have never uttered a falsehood during their whole lives, and those women who have voluntarily burned themselves with their husbands. All these are absorbed in the divine essence."

On ethics, the Hindoos have nothing that can be called philosophy. Their duties, moral, civil, and religious, are all laid down in their Vedas and Shastras; and enjoined by what they believe to be divine authority, which supercedes all reasoning concerning their fitness or utility. The business of their Pandits is to interpret those books, which are extremely ancient, and written in a language that has long been unintelligible to every other order of men; but no Pandit will alter the text, however impossible to be reconciled to principles established in his own practice of astronomy. On such occasions, the usual apology for their sacred books is, that "such things may have been formerly, and may be so still; but that for astronomical purposes, astronomical rules must be followed." The great duties of morality have been prescribed in every religious code; and they are not overlooked in that of the Hindoos, though the highest merit that a Brahmin can have consists in voluntary acts of abstinence and mortification, and in contempt of death. Of the ancient philosophy of the Arabians and Chinese nothing certain can be laid; and the narrow limits of such an abstract as this, do not admit of our mentioning the conjectures of the learned, which contradict each other, and are all equally groundless.

There is indeed sufficient evidence that both nations were at a very early period observers of the stars; and that the Chinese had even a theory by which they foretold eclipses (see Astronomy, No 2, 3.) but there is reason to believe that the Arabians, like other people in their circumstances, were nothing more than judicial astrologers, who professed not the smallest portion of astronomical science.

Pliny makes mention of their magi, whilst later writers tell us, that they were famous for their ingenuity in solving enigmatic questions, and for their skill in the arts of divination: but the authors of Greece are silent concerning their philosophy; and there is not an Arabian book of greater antiquity than the Koran extant. (See Philology, Section II.)

Leaving therefore regions so barren of information, let us pass to the Phoenicians, whose commercial celebrity has induced many learned men to allow them great credit for early science. If it be true, as seems highly probable, that the ships of this nation had doubled the Cape and almost encompassed the peninsula of Africa long before the era of Solomon (See Ophir, No 10.), we cannot doubt that the Phoenicians had made great proficiency in the art of navigation, and in the science of astronomy, at a period of very remote antiquity. Nor were these the only sciences cultivated by that ancient people: the learned Cudworth has, in our opinion, sufficiently proved that Mochus or Mochus a Phoenician, who, according to Strabo, flourished before the Trojan war, was the author of the atomic philosophy afterwards adopted by Leucippus, Democritus, and others among the Greeks; and that it was with some of the successors of this sage that Pythagoras, as Jamblichus tells us, converted at Sidon, and from them received his doctrine of Monads (See Pythagoras). Another proof of the early progress of the Phoenicians in philosophy may be found in the fragments of their historian Sanchoniatho which have been preferred by Eusebius*. We are indeed aware that men of great celebrity have called in question the authenticity of those fragments, and even the very existence of such a writer as Sanchoniatho; but for this scepticism we can discover no foundation (See Sanchoniatho). His history may have been interpolated in some places by the translator Philo-Byblius; but Porphyry, Eusebius, and Theodoret, speak of it as a work of undoubted credit, and affirm that its author flourished before the Trojan war. Now this ancient writer teaches that, according to the wise men of his country, all things arose at first from the necessary agency of an active principle upon a passive chaotic mass which he calls mor. This chaos Cudworth thinks was the same with the elementary water of Thales, who was also of Phoenician extraction; but Moehim justly observes that it was rather dark air, since Philo translates it σκοτεινός. Be this as it may, nothing can be more evident than that the Phoenicians must have made some progress in what must surely be considered as philosophy, however false, so early as the era of Sanchoniatho; for speculations about the origin of the world never occur to untaught barbarians. Besides Mochus and Sanchoniatho, Cadmus, who introduced letters into Greece, may undoubtedly be reckoned among the Phoenician philosophers; for though it is not pretended that the alphabet was of his invention, and though it is by no means certain that the Greeks, at the time of his arrival among them, were wholly destitute of alphabetic characters (See Philology, No 132); yet the man who could prevail with illiterate savages to adopt the use of strange characters, must have been a great matter of the science of human nature. Several other Phoenician philosophers are mentioned by Strabo; but as they flourished at a later period, and philosophized after the sylleptic mode of the Greeks, they fall not properly under our notice. We pass on therefore to the philosophy of Egypt.

It has been already observed that the Egyptians boasted of being the first of nations, and the authors of all the science which in separate rays illuminated the rest of the world. But though this claim was undoubtedly ill-founded, their high antiquity and early progress in the arts of civil life cannot be controverted. The Greeks with one voice confess that all their learning and wisdom came from Egypt, either imported immediately by their own philosophers, or brought through Phoenicia by the sages of the east; and we know from higher authority than the histories of Greece, that at a period so remote as the birth of Moses, the wisdom of the Egyptians was proverbially famous. Yet the history of Egyptian learning and philosophy, though men of the first eminence both ancient and modern have bestowed much pains in attempts to elucidate it, still remains involved in clouds of uncertainty. That they had some knowledge of physiology, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, are facts which cannot be questioned; but there is reason to believe that even these sciences were in Egypt pushed no farther than to the uses of life. That they believed in the existence of incorporeal substances is certain; because Herodotus affirms us that they were the first assertors of the immortality, pre-existence, and transmigration of human souls, which they could not have been without holding those souls to be at least incorporeal, if not immaterial.

The author of Egyptian learning is generally acknowledged to have been Thoth, Theut, or Taaut, called by the Greeks Hermes, and by the Romans Mercury; but of this personage very little is known. Diodorus Siculus says that he was chief minister to Osiris, and that he improved language, invented letters, instituted religious rites, and taught astronomy, music, and other arts. The same thing is affirmed by Sanchoniatho, whose antiquity has been already mentioned; by Manetho an Egyptian priest, who flourished during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus; and by Plato, whose authority, as he resided long in Egypt, and was himself an eminent philosopher, is perhaps more to be depended upon than that of the other two. In the Philebus we are told that Thoth was the inventor of letters; and lest we should suppose that by those letters nothing more is meant than picture writing or symbolical hieroglyphics, it is added, that he distinguished between vowels and consonants, determining the number of each. The same philosopher, in his Phaedrus, attributes to Thoth the invention of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and hieroglyphic learning; and subjoins a disputation.