76 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book I. 



It is called Logic ; of which Ariftotle, and he only, has given us a 

 fyftem; and as all fcience muft begin with an analyfis, he has given us 

 a moft wonderful analyfis of the operations of the human mind; be- 

 ginning with fimple terrns ; then proceeding to propofitions ; from 

 thence to the colledion of thefe propofitions, which he calls very pro- 

 perly Syllogifm, and which is the laft work of demonftration. 



When we confider the infinite variety of fubjeds, upon which 

 men reafon, how this infinity is bounded, and limits fet to it by the 

 book upon the Categories, which reduce to clafles and numbers the 

 whole things of this univerfe, and without which there could have 

 been no fcience of logic, as there can be no fcience of infinity;— 

 when we confider alfo the variety of propofitions. formed of the 

 ideas contained in the Categories, and the feveral fpeclefes of them 

 produced by the differences of the predicate and fubjedt, the matter 

 and manner of the propofition, all enumerated by Ariftotle and his 

 Commentators to the number of 3024; a number that muft appear 

 incredible to thofe who have never thought upon the fubje£t ;— and 

 when we join to all this, the analyfis of the fyllogifms compofed of 

 thefe propofitions into three figures and 14 modes, we muft ac- 

 knowledge, that Ariftotle's Logic is the moft wonderful fyftem of 

 fcience that ever was invented ; fuch as could not have been in- 

 vented by one man, even a man of fuch a genius as Ariftotle, but 

 muft have been the invention of a fucceflion of men from father to 

 fon for many generations, conftantly employed in the cultivation of 

 arts and fciences. Such a fucceflion never was in any other country 

 than Egypt ; and which, therefore, I hold to be the parent country 

 of all arts and fciences*. 



But even Syllogifm is not fufficient for demonftrative reafoning; 

 for there muft be likewife Definition^ by which we know exadly the 



nature 



• See page 54, and following of the preface to the III. vol. likewife p, 45. of the 

 fame preface, where I have enlarged much upon the wonderful invention of logic, and 

 the utility of it. 



