Among the ideal systems which have varied with the fashion of the times, the Arabians adopted the philosophy of the Stagirite, alike intelligible or alike obscure for the readers of every age.

Plato wrote for the Athenians, and his allegorical genius is too closely blended with the language and religion of Greece.

After the fall of that religion, the Peripatetics, emerging from their obscurity, prevailed in the controversies of the Oriental sects, and their founder was long afterwards restored by the Mahometans of Spain to the Latin schools.

The physics, both of the Academy and the Lycaeum, as they are built, not on observation, but on argument, have retarded the progress of real knowledge.

The metaphysics of infinite, or finite, spirit, have too often been enlisted in the service of superstition.