But I cannot conclude this section, without soliciting the reader’s attention to a comparison of the difference between the ancient philosophy, and that invented by Mr. Locke, and the moderns. According to Mr. Locke’s system ideas are formed from sensible particulars, by a kind of mechanical operation; so that truth is something by its nature, posterior to sensation, and entirely dependent on it for existence. According to Plato, ideas are eternal and immaterial beings, the originals of all sensible forms, and the fountains of all evidence and truth; so that on this system truth ranks among the first, and not in the last of things; and would still retain its nature, though the corporeal senses were no more. According to Mr. Locke, the soul is a mere _rasa tabula_, an empty recipient, a mechanical blank. According to Plato, she is an ever-written tablet, a plenitude of forms, a vital and intellectual energy. On the former system, she is on a level with the most degraded natures, the receptacle of material species, and the spectator of delusion and non-entity[21]. Hence, her energies are nothing but somnolent perceptions, and encumbered cogitations; for all her knowledge terminates in sense, and her science in passion. Like a man between sleeping and waking, her visions are turbid and confused, and the phantoms of a material night, continually glide before her drowsy eye. But on the latter system, the soul is the connecting medium of an intelligible and sensible nature, the bright repository of all middle forms, and the vigilant eye of all cogitative reasons. Hence she is capable of rousing herself from the sleep of a corporeal life, and emerging from this dark Cimmerian land, into the regions of light and reality. At first, indeed, before she is excited by science, she is oppressed with lethargy, and clouded with oblivion; but in proportion as learning and enquiry stimulate her dormant powers, she wakens from the dreams of ignorance, and opens her eye to the irradiations of wisdom. On Mr. Locke’s system, the principles of science and sense are the same, for the energies of both originate from material forms, on which they are continually employed. Hence, science is subject to the flowing and perishable nature of particulars; and if body and its attributes were destroyed, would be nothing but a name. But on the system of Plato, they differ as much as delusion and reality; for here the vital, permanent, and lucid nature of ideas is the fountain of science; and the inert, unstable, and obscure nature of sensible objects, the source of sensation. On Mr. Locke’s system, body may be modified into thought, and become an intelligent creature; it may be subtilized into life, and shrink, by its exility, into intellect. On that of Plato, body can never alter its nature by modification, however, it may be rarefied and refined, varied by the transposition of its parts, or tortured by the hand of experiment. In