72 A N T I E N T METAPHYSICS. Book I. 



forming animal. — This not fo good a definition as Ariflotles. — A- 

 rijlotk gives us afyjlem cf recfoning from Popular Opinions, ivhich 

 be calls DialeSlics ; and ivith this, and his treatife De Sophifticis 

 Elenchis, he concludes his great luork of Logic. — Summary of this, 

 ivotk. 



BUT before I proceed to fpeak of the invention of language 

 and other arts, I think it is proper to fhew the progrefs of the 

 human mind from ideas to fcience. What ideas are, and how they 

 are formed by intelledl, I hope I have explained, to the fatisfadion 

 of the reader, in the preceding chapter. Cut ideas are only the ma- 

 terials of fcience ; and in order to know what fcience is, we muft 

 know how thofe materials are put together fo as to produce fcience. 



The firft ftep from ideas towards fcience, is Propofitions, which 

 are formed, by comparing one idea with another ; fo that, from the 

 comparative, or Logical faculty, as Ariftotle calls it, which we have 

 in common with the better kind of brutes, not only our ideas pro- 

 ceed, but fcience, and, in general, all the operations of the intellec- 

 tual mind *. When we compare our ideas, we perceive, as Mr 

 Locke tells us, their agreement or difagreement : But wherein this 

 agreement confifts, he has not told us ; nor can any man tell, who 

 has not ftudied the antient philofophy. But that philofophy teaches 

 us, that in every propofition there is one idea more general than 

 another, and that this more general idea either contains or 

 comprehends the lefs general, or does not : And thus are formed 

 affirmative and negative propofitions. The more general idea, 



which 



• See what I have faid of this logical or comparative faculty of the human mind, 

 In the firft chapter of this volume, and in vol. L p. 381. 



