Read Ebook: Memoirs of the Life of David Rittenhouse LLD. F.R.S. by Barton William E William Eleazar

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Footnote 3:

However Caesar may be admired as an accomplished gentleman and scholar,--or even as a great and gallant soldier,--he ought ever to be reprobated as an usurper and a tyrant.--Dr. Adam Ferguson remarks, that "Julius Caesar possessed the talent of influencing, of gaining, and employing men to his purpose, beyond any other person that is known in the history of the world: but it is surely not for the good of mankind," continues this able writer, "that he should be admired in other respects. To admire even his clemency, is to mistake for it policy and cunning."

Much of the glory of a nation results from the renown of illustrious men, among its citizens: a country which has produced many great men, may justly pride itself on the fame which those individuals had acquired. The community to which we belong is entitled to such services as we can render to it: these the patriot will cheerfully bestow; and, in promoting the honour and prosperity of his country, a large portion of the lustre which the exertion of his talents shall have shed upon it, are again reflected on himself.

Footnote 4:

The following epitaph, in classical Latin, is inscribed on the noble monument erected to the memory of Newton, in the Abbey Church of Westminster:

The cultivator of those branches of natural science which constitute practical and experimental philosophy;--equally with the teacher of religion and morals,--extends the beneficial effects of his researches and knowledge beyond the bounds of his particular country. Truth is every where the same; and the promulgation of it tends, at all times and in all places, to elevate to its proper station the dignity of man. The more extensively, then, true science can be diffused, the greater will be the means--the fairer will be the rational prospect, of enlarging the sphere of human happiness. The philosopher may, pre-eminently, be considered as a citizen of the world; yet without detracting in any degree from that spirit of patriotism, which ever stimulates a good man to contribute his primary and most important services to his own country. There are, indeed, some species of aids, which are exclusively due to a community, by all its citizens; and, consequently, such as they are bound to withhold from other national communities, in certain contingencies and under peculiar circumstances. But a knowledge of those truths which lead to the acquisition of wisdom and practice of virtue, serves to meliorate the condition of mankind generally, at all times, and under all circumstances;--inasmuch as they greatly assist in banishing error, with its frequent concomitant, vice, not only from the more civilized portions of the world, but also by their inherent influence, from among nations less cultivated and refined.

Even the most celebrated sages of antiquity, extremely imperfect as we know the philosophy of the early ages to have been, elucidated, by the purity of their lives and the morality of their doctrines, the truth of the position,--that the cultivation of natural wisdom, unaided as it then was by the lights of revelation, encreased every propensity to moral virtue. Such were Socrates, Plato his disciple, and Anaxagoras; who flourished between four and five centuries before the Christian era.

Footnote 5:

Aristotle is supposed, by some, to have imbibed the best and most rational of his notions from his master Plato; to whom, notwithstanding, he seems to have been greatly inferior as a moral philosopher.

His opinions respecting government, abound in good sense. As a general outline of his sentiments on this subject, it may serve to mention, that he distinguished civil government into two kinds; one, in which the general welfare is the great object; the other, in which this is not at all considered. In the first class, he places the limited monarchy--the aristocratical form of government--and the republic, properly so called. In the second, he comprehends tyranny--oligarchy--and democracy; considering these as corruptions of the three first. Limited monarchy, he alleges, degenerates into despotism, when the sovereign assumes to himself the exercise of the entire authority of the state, refusing to submit his power to any controul; the aristocracy sinks into an oligarchy, when the supreme power is no longer possessed by a reasonable proportion of virtuous men,--but by a small number of rulers, whose wealth alone constitutes their claim to authority; and the republican government is debased into a democracy, when the poorest class of the people have too great an influence in the public deliberations.

Footnote 5a:

Aristot. de Rep.--lib, 3. cap. 6.

Footnote 5b:

Id. Rhet.--lib. 1. cap. 8.

Footnote 5c:

Id. de Rep.--lib. 3. cap. 7.

Footnote 5d:

Footnote 5e:

Ibid.

Footnote 6:

Footnote 7:

"Nulla gens tam fera, quae non sciat Deum habendum esse, quamvis ignoret qualem habere deceat."

CIC. de Natur? Deorum.

Footnote 8:

While Plato followed the morals of Socrates, he cultivated the metaphysical opinions of Pythagoras. He is said to have founded his physics on the notions of Heraclitus: it may be presumed, nevertheless, that he derived that branch of his system from a better source.

Footnote 9:

Cultivating, as Plato did, the mind-expanding science of Astronomy, faintly even as the true principles of this branch of science were then perceived, this philosopher could not fail to derive, from the vastness, beauty and order, manifested in the appearances and revolutions of the heavenly bodies, a conviction of the perpetual existence of a great intelligent First Cause. It was, indeed, as the Abb? Barthelemy justly remarks, the order and beauty apparent through the whole universe, that compelled men to resort to a First Cause: This, he observes, the early philosophers of the Ionian school had acknowledged. But Anaxagoras was the first who discriminated that First Cause from matter; and not only this distinguished pupil of Thales, but Anaximander, who, antecedently to him, taught philosophy at Athens, with Archelaus the master of Socrates, all treated in their writings of the formation of the universe, of the nature of things, and of geometry and astronomy.

Footnote 10:

"An inordinate desire to explain and generalise, without facts and observations, led the ancient philosophers to the most absurd and extravagant notions; though, in a few cases, they have displayed the most wonderful ingenuity, and sagaciously anticipated the discoveries of modern times."

Footnote 11:

Footnote 12:

A disciple of Anaximenes, and preceptor to Socrates. He died 428 years B. C. in the seventy-second year of his age.

Footnote 13:

According to Mr. Gibbon, the philosophers of Greece deduced their morals from the nature of man, rather than from that of God. They meditated, however, as we are informed by this very ingenious historian, on the Divine Nature, as a most curious and important speculation; and, in the profound enquiry, they displayed both the strength and the weakness of the human understanding. The Stoics and the Platonists endeavoured to reconcile the interests of reason with their notions of piety. The opinions of the Academicians and Epicureans, the two other of the four most celebrated schools, were of a less religious cast: But, continues Mr. Gibbon, whilst the modest science of the former induced them to doubt, the positive ignorance of the latter urged them to deny, the providence of a Supreme Ruler.

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Footnote 18:

That the sun is at rest, and that the planets revolve round him, is an opinion that appears to have been received of old, by Philolaus, Aristarchus of Samos, and the whole sect of the Pythagoreans. It is probable, as Mr. Rowning observes, that this notion was derived from them, by the Greeks: But the opinion that the sun stood still in the centre, while the whole heavens moved around it, was the prevailing one, until Copernicus, by the establishment of his system, restored the ancient astronomy of the Pythagorean school.

Footnote 18a:

But after the appearance of Copernicus, succeeded by the ingenious Tycho Brahe and sagacious Kepler, arose the learned physiologist Bacon, Viscount of St. Albans,--one of the most illustrious contributors to the yet scanty stock of experimental philosophy. And soon after, in the same age and nation, was manifested to the world, in the full glory of meridian splendour, that great luminary of natural science, who first enlightened mankind by diffusing among them the rays of well-ascertained truths; clearly exhibiting to all, those fundamental principles of the laws of nature, by which the grand, the stupendous system of the material universe is both sustained and governed:--

"Nature and Nature's Laws lay hid in night; God said, Let NEWTON be,--and all was Light."

Finally, it was reserved for our own age and country to derive dignity and fame, from having given birth to an illustrious successor and disciple of that immortal man, in the person of the yet recently-departed RITTENHOUSE.

Footnote 19:

Nicholas Copernic that celebrated astronomer, "whose vast genius, assisted by such lights as the remains of antiquity afforded him, explained the true system of the universe, as at present understood," was born at Thorn in Royal Prussia, the 19th of January, 1442. He was alike distinguished for his piety and innocence, as for his extraordinary genius and discoveries. He died in the seventy-seventh year of his age.

Footnote 19a:

Footnote 20:

This great man was a native of Knudsturp, a province of Scania in Denmark, and born the 18th of December, 1546, of an illustrious family. He was the first, who, by the accuracy and number of his observations, made the way for the revival of astronomy among the moderns; although, "in theory," as Rittenhouse has expressed it, "he mangled the beautiful system of Copernicus."--Brah? died at the age of fifty-five years.

Footnote 20a:

Ibid.

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