Chap. IV. A N T I E N r M E T A P H Y S I C S. 409 



who have learned no art or Iclence, no logic, dialccllc, or rhetoric, will 

 confound fpeakers who appear very eloquent and plaufible. This is 

 the cafe of the Indians of North America, as I was alTured by a mif- 

 fionary who had been long among them * ; and the fame thing 

 has been confirmed to me by others : For, both in their private 

 converfations, when we can make them take the trouble to rea- , 

 fon, and in their conferences and debates with us on public bu- 

 finefs, they fhow a wonderful power of dialedical reafoning. With- 

 out laying down any principles upon their fide, they do no 

 more than lay hold of what we have faid, and fhow either that 

 what we would deduce from it is not confequent, or that we are 

 repugnant and contradictory to ourfelves. — Their natural parts, I am 

 perfuaded, as I have faid elfewhere f, are fuperior to ours ; and there- 

 fore it behoves us the more to take all the affiftance we can from 

 learning. Now, I am convinced that the diligent ftudy of Ariftotle's 

 topics, together with his books of rhetoric, in which a great deal of 

 argument of the fame kind is to be found, would give our orators a 

 copioufnefs of argument, which they can never otherwife acquire. Nor 

 are Ariftotle*s books of topics difficult to be underflood ; for they are 

 of a popular kind, like his poetry and rhetoric, and therefore are 

 written in a ftyle not fo concife and obfcure as his books of deep phi- 

 lofophy : And, if any affiftance were neceflary for the underfianding 

 them, we have a very accurate commentary upon them by Alexan- 

 der Aphrodifienfis, Ariftotle's oldeft commentator of the Alexandrian 

 School, 



F f f CHAP. 



* Monfieur Boubaud. See what I have faid of this mifTionary in the firfl: volume 

 of the Origin and Progrefs of Language, 2d edit, book 3 chap. 10. page 558. 

 t Origin and Progrefs of Language, vol. 3. injinc. 



