114 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



cept it be i^f*^ : Neither does that exadly exprefs it ; for it only 

 denotes that impulfe of the mind, which is confequent upon it, and 

 immediately precedes the adl:, and is not peculiar to brutes, but is^ 

 common to man with other animals *. 



Thefe are all the operations of the human mind which fall under 

 the firft clafs of its gnoftic powers, viz. the faculty of perceiving par- 

 ticular ohjeds, whether fmgle or in combination ; and i come now to 

 fpeak of that higher gnoftic faculty, by which it perceives generals^ 

 either fingly, each by itfelf, or combined together in proportions. This 

 faculty, in Greek, is called -s^oti-, and, in Euglilh, inteikB, By this fa- 

 cultVi it is admitted, by all philofophers who have reafoned to any 

 purpofe upon the fubjedt of mind^ that we perceive fingle ideas ; and, in 

 the fame manner, that we perceive external objeds by the fenfes ; that 

 is, at once, by one fingle individual a£l ; or, as the Greek philofophers ex- 

 prefsit, ftice. £7ri?«Av,. It isalfo admitted, by all thefe philofophers, that it is by 

 the intelledl we perceive the truth of felt-evident propofitions : So that 

 this kind, at leaft, of complex apprehenfion, is the operation of this 

 faculty : And, for the fame reafon, 1 think, it muft be admitted, that 

 the perception of the truth of any propofition, however we attain to 

 that perception, is the z.€i of the intellect, and is as much one fingle 

 individual acft, as the apprehenfion of a fingle idea. The only que- 



ftiouy 



* The diftinction that I here make betwixt ^oyof, or reafon, and Nouj, or intellecf, 

 one of which, I iav, is cominon to man and brute, the other peculiar to man, will 

 r,o doubt appear to many readers new and ftrange ; but it is not any difcovery of minej 

 being to be found, as every thing elfe of any value in this work is, in the writings of 

 the antient phili fophers, particularly, in a mod valuable piece of Pythagorean phi ofo» 

 phy, Hierocles in Aurca Cdrmina^ ^^///o Needham, p. iCo. where he fays, that the 

 -Xoyti or -^vxYt ;i<>v;v.*i, holds the middle place betwixt the irrational, that is, the lowed 

 f^rt of our nature, and intellea, which is the higheft. This i-s juit where 1 have 

 placed it ; for the fenfes and phantafia are^the irrational part ot our nature, being alto- 

 gether incapable of comparifon, in which the effence of reafon confifts. Now, I have 

 fct above them the rational faculty, and above it the intellea : As. tht-rcfore, the 

 antients diflingu (bed in this m.anner, it cannot be wondered, that, to the better forts 

 of brute, th( y gave that faculty, which is next to the high^ ft firulty in man, though, 

 as we have feen, very different from it, and, by many degrees, lefs excellent. 



