(99.) But the successors of these _bonâ fide_ enquirers into nature debased the standard of truth; and, taking advantage of the credit justly attached to their discoveries, renounced the modest character of learners, and erected themselves into teachers, and, to maintain their pretensions to this character, adopted the tone of men who had nothing further to learn. Unfortunately for true science, the national character gave every encouragement to pretensions of this kind. That restless craving after novelty, which distinguished the Greeks in their civil and political relations, pursued them into their philosophy. Whatever speculations were only ingenious and new had irresistible charms; and the teacher who could embody a clever thought in elegant language, or at once save his followers and himself the trouble of thinking or reasoning, by bold assertion, was too often induced to acquire cheaply the reputation of superior knowledge, snatch a few superficial notions from the most ordinary and obvious facts, envelope them in a parade of abstruse words, declare them the primary and ultimate principles of all things, and denounce as absurd and impious all opinions opposed to his own. (100.) In this war of words the study of nature was neglected, and an humble and patient enquiry after facts altogether despised, as unworthy of the high _priori_ ground a true philosopher ought to take. It was the radical error of the Greek philosophy to imagine that the same method which proved so eminently successful in mathematical, would be equally so in physical, enquiries, and that, by setting out from a few simple and almost self-evident notions, or _axioms_, every thing could be reasoned out. Accordingly, we find them constantly straining their invention to discover these principles, which were to prove so pregnant. One makes _fire_ the essential matter and origin of the universe; another, _air_; a third, discovers the key to every difficulty, and the explanation of all phenomena, in the “το απειρον” or infinitude of things; a fourth, in the το ὁν and the το μη ὁν, that is to say, in entity and nonentity;--till at length an authority, which was destined to command opinions for nearly two thousand years, settled this important point, by deciding, that _matter_, _form_, and _privation_, were to be considered the principles of all things.