156 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IIL 



foning from popular opinions, or from the concefTions of the man 

 with whom you reafon, muO: be cUftinguiflied from dcmonftration, 

 of which Ariftotle has treated very fully in his lajl Analytics; where, 

 after having fhown us in his firjl Analytics what Syllogifm^ in gene- 

 ral, is, to which all kind of reafoning may be reduced, he iliows us 

 what the demonftrative fyllogifm is ; and that it is fuch, not only 

 from the form of the fyllogifm, but from the nature of the fubjed:. 



And thus much may fuffice for the Logic and Dialectic of Arifto- 

 tle. The next branch of philofophy which I have mentioned, as 

 ftudied by him, is Morals; of thefe I have fpoken at conliderablc 

 length in the preceding chapter, where 1 have fhown, that he makes 

 the principle of virtue to be the ro koXov^ or the Pulchrum et Honef- 

 turn of the Latins. And I will only add here, that, in his Magna 

 Moralia^^ he fays, that the ^op(J>^ri ^pog to k-.Xov, is more the princi- 

 ple of virtue than X070?, or reafon ; for, fays he, in the practice of 

 virtue, the ^coyt^n muft begin and carry on the pradice, while reafon 

 only direds and approves; it is therefore the leading principle f. 



The next branch of philofophy that Ariftotle has given us, is Po- 

 litics ; a fcience which he has treated in a manner very difterent 

 from that in which it is treated by Plato, who has made of it a matter 

 of mere fpeculation, and more a pleafant fidion, I think, than a 

 thino- of ufe or pradice. But Ariftotle has made altogether a prac- 

 tical fcience of it; and has formed his fyftem of it from the exam- 

 ples of different ftates, whofe forms of government, and their fe- 

 veral changes and revolutions, he appears to have ftudied moft 

 diligently. And here he fhows a wonderful knowledge of hiftory, 



fuch 



* Lib. 2. cap. 7. verf. fin. 



■f- See what I have faid upon this fubjeft, in the preface to vol. 3. p. xxxiv. where I 

 have fhown. that the Pythagoreans made the t# x«A«y, or principle of virtue, to be a 

 kind of pafHon or enthufiafm. 



