Typical forms and special ends in creation / by James M'Cosh and George Dickie.

  • McCosh, James, 1811-1894.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Typical forms and special ends in creation / by James M'Cosh and George Dickie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    23/554
    which is so clearly seen in music, as in some mysterious sense the principia of the universe. Aristotle tells us, that they considered existing things to be a copy of num- bers,* and we have extracts preserved from the writings of some of the disciples of the school, describing numbers as being in the Divine Mind prior to the existence of things, as being used as a model (naQ&Seiyfia) in the formation of objects, and as that by which all things were brought together and linked in order. Among the disciples of the same school, and others who arose at a subsequent date, there was supposed to be a deep mean- ing in forms ; and the properties of certain figures, such as the triangle, the square, the parallelogram, the circle, the ellipse, were investigated with great care, giving us the science of geometry as the result. A very special in- terest gathered round certain numbers, such as seven and ten, and certain figures, such as the circle and triangle, which came in consequence to be regarded as perfect, or as sacred. From a still earlier date, and as a manifestation of the same intellectual propensity, peculiar feelings be- came associated with certain recurring times and perio- dical seasons, such as the revolutions of the moon, the signs of the zodiac, and other cycles, which seemed to have a deep significancy in the economy of nature. De- mocritus, who lived 400 B.C., and the Epicureans, who flourished at a later date, sought for the origin of this order in the formation of all things out of atoms possessed of definite forms. The sublime genius of Plato ascribed it to certain patterns after which all things were fash- ioned, which patterns he traced back to the eternal ideas of the Divine Mind. Aristotle, while correcting some of the extravagances of his great master, clung resolutely to the doctrine, that forms were as necessary as matter to * yi'ijirioiv dvai ra tivra t&v apiBjxwv.—Metaph. of Aris.