The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and PrivateJefferson, Thomas
History
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private
Jefferson, Thomas
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865
To return to Priestley. You could make a more luminous book than his,
upon the doctrines of heathen philosophers compared with those of
revelation. Why has he not given us a more satisfactory account of the
Pythagorean Philosophy and Theology? He barely names Œileus, who lived
long before Plato. His treatise of kings and monarchy has been destroyed,
I conjecture, by Platonic Philosophers, Platonic Jews or Christians,
or by fraudulent republicans or despots. His treatise of the universe
has been preserved. He labors to prove the eternity of the world. The
Marquis D'Argens translated it, in all its noble simplicity. The Abbé
Batteaux has since given another translation. D'Argens not only explains
the text, but sheds more light upon the ancient systems. His remarks are
so many treatises, which develop the concatenation of ancient opinions.
The most essential ideas of the theology, of the physics, and of the
morality of the ancients are clearly explained, and their different
doctrines compared with one another and with the modern discoveries. I
wish I owned this book and one hundred thousand more that I want every
day, now when I am almost incapable of making any use of them. No doubt
he informs us that Pythagoras was a great traveller. Priestley barely
mentions Timæus, but it does not appear that he had read him. Why has
he not given us an account of him and his book? He was before Plato,
and gave him the idea of his Timæus, and much more of his philosophy.
After his master, he maintained the existence of matter; that matter was
capable of receiving all sorts of forms; that a moving power agitated
all the parts of it, and that an intelligence produced a regular and
harmonious world. This intelligence had seen a plan, an _idea_ (Logos)
in conformity to which it wrought, and without which it would not have
known what it was about, nor what it wanted to do. This plan was the
_idea_, image or model which had represented to the Supreme Intelligence
the world before it existed, which had directed it in its action upon
the moving power, and which it contemplated in forming the elements, the
bodies and the world. This model was distinguished from the intelligence
which produced the world, as the architect is from his plans. He divided
the productive cause of the world into a spirit which directed the
moving force, and into an image which determined it in the choice of
the directions which it gave to the moving force, and the forms which
it gave to matter. I wonder that Priestley has overlooked this, because
it is the same philosophy with Plato's, and would have shown that the
Pythagorean as well as the Platonic philosophers probably concurred in
the fabrication of the Christian Trinity. Priestley mentions the name of
Achylas, but does not appear to have read him, though he was a successor
of Pythagoras, and a great mathematician, a great statesman and a great
general. John Gram, a learned and honorable Dane, has given a handsome
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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