PREFACE. xlvii 



It may be faid that men may reafon very well, and have reaibned 

 very well without knowing any thing of the Art of Reafoning. But 

 women and children fpeak,. as we fee, very well, without any know- 

 ledge of Grammar or the Art of Speech ; but will it for that reafon 

 be faid that the ftudy of Grammar is not ufeful. In like manner,, 

 men fmg and play upon inftruments, without the leail knowledge 

 ©f the Art of Mufic ; and I have fome pieces of the mufic of bar- 

 barous nations that I think admirable : But will it for that be denied 

 that Mufic is an Art, or that our performances of the mufical 

 kind may be greatly improved by the knowledge of it. In all the 

 Arts, the pradice muft have gone before the theory, and men mufl: 

 have fpoken, fung, and reafoned, long before an Art of Speech, of 

 Mufic, or of Reafoning, was invented. 



Ariflotle has very properly entitled his book upon Logic Andy-- 

 tics ; for there could have been no Science or Reafoning without an 

 analyfis or refolution of it into its elements or firft principles ; and 

 the fame is true of all Arts and Sciences without exception. Thus 

 there could have been no Science of Geometry if the dimeniions of 

 Body had not been analyfed into Points, Lines, Length, Breadth,, 

 and Depth; there could have been no grammatical art if the mate- 

 rial part of language, that is the Articulation, had not been refolved 

 into elem.ental founds ; neither without that could the great difco- 

 very of letters have been made, or the writing art invented : And 

 without the analyfis of the formal part of language into what is 

 commonly called the Parts of Speech, the mo/t valuable part of the 

 grammatical art never could have been invented : But the artificers- 

 of language, by analyfing in'.o a few radical founds, differently va- 

 ried and modified according to certain rules, have, with mofl won- 

 derful art, contrived to exprefs the almoft infinite variety of the 

 conceptions of the human mind ; and this is the Art which appears- 



