Plutarch says, that the effect of the naval power of Athens, established by Themistocles, was to render their government more popular: and that husbandmen and labourers are more friends to nobility than merchants and seamen are.--_In Vita Themist._ Solon is the first person mentioned in history to have raised the value of money, which, says Plutarch, was a benefit to the poor in paying their debts, and no loss to the rich.--_In Vita Solon._ PHILOSOPHY. Men love pleasure more than they hate pain.--_Bayle._ Men are vicious, but hate a religion that authorizes vice.--_Id._ The accounts we have of the sentiments of the ancient philosophers not very distinct nor consistent. Cicero contradicts himself in two sentences: in saying that Thales allowed the ordering of the world by a mind, and in saying that Anaxagoras was the first. Strato's atheism the most dangerous of the ancient--holding the origin of the world from nature, or a matter endued with activity. Bayle thinks there are none but the Cartesians can refute this atheism. A Stratonician could retort the arguments of all the sects of philosophy. Of the Stoics, who maintained their God to be fiery and compound; and of the Platonicians, who asserted the ideas to be distinct from the Deity. The same question,--Why the parts or ideas of God had that particular arrangement?--is as difficult as why the world had. Some pretend that there can be no necessity, according to the system of atheism, "because even matter cannot be determined without something superior to determine it."--_Fenelon._ Three proofs of the existence of a God: 1st, Some thing necessarily existent, and what is so is infinitely perfect. 2d, The idea of infinite must come from an infinite being. 3d, The idea of infinite perfection implies that of actual existence. There is a remarkable story to confirm the Cartesian philosophy of the brain. A man hurt by the fall of a horse, forgot about twenty years of his life, and remembered what went before in a much more lively manner than usual. FOOTNOTES: [106:1] Dr. Butler was consecrated bishop, 3d December, 1739, and was afterwards translated to the see of Durham, 16th October, 1750. He died 16th June, 1752, in the 60th year of his age. [107:1] Tytler's Life of Kames, i. 90. [107:2] MS. R.S.E. [108:1] Tytler's Life of Kames, i. 93. [110:1] London Review, v. 200. [111:1] See above, p. 91. [113:1] Horat. Lib. i. Sat. iii. l. 98. [114:1] Edit. 1636, p. 5. "Alexander the Sixth was endowed with wonderful cunning and extraordinary sagacity; had a surprising genius in suggesting expedients in the cabinet, and uncommon efficacy in persuading; and in all matters of consequence an incredible earnestness and dexterity."--Goddard's Translation. [116:1] Dated, 12th November, 1739. MS. R.S.E. [116:2] MS. R.S.E. [117:1] He was born on 5th June, 1723. [118:1] See above, p. 78.