lyS ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IIL 



fhows the relation betwixt the praedicate and fubje<£t of every propo- 

 firion; which is that of the Subjed of the proportion, or lefTer term, 

 being contained in the Praedicate or greater term: And it is the foun- 

 dation of all demonftration and reafoning of every kind; for the truth 

 of the fyllogifm is, as I have faid, founded upon this plain propofi- 

 tion, that if A contain B, and B contain C ; then A contains C. 

 And as the general ideas contain the particular, fo thefe are derived 

 from the general, being fubftraded from them in the fame manner 

 as a lefler number is fubftraded from a greater. 



As I have mentioned Memory in this chapter, I will fay fome- 

 thing more upon it before I conclude the chapter. It is, as I have 

 faid, the repofitory and cuftodier of our ideas, and of the propofitions- 

 and reafonings we form from thofe ideas, in the fame manner as the 

 phantafia preferves our perceptions of objeds of fenfe. Memory is of 

 fuch importance, that without it we could make no progrefs in arts or 

 fciences, nor indeed could any art or fcience have been invented ; fo 

 that it was not without reafon that the antient mythologifts made Me- 

 mory the mother of the mufes, and Jupiter, the God of Intelligence 

 and Council [fjurirnvu zevg, as he is called in Homer) their father j 

 as it is by memory and intelligence that all arts and fciences were 

 invented and cultivated. But even by our memory we could not 

 have made any confiderable progrefs in arts or fciences without the 

 writing art ; for as all our faculties, in this ftate of our exif-^ 

 tence, are more or lefs imperfed, fo is our memory : And it is fo 

 particularly in old age, when having acquired fo much know- 

 ledge, in the courfe of perhaps a long life, we Ihould be able to 

 make ftHl muck greater advances in arts and fciences. Now, the 

 writing art is then of the greateft ufe ; for though it be not an art 

 of memory^ it is, as the wife Egyptian King obferved, an art of re- 

 minijccnce^y by which we fupply the defeds of memory, if, there- 

 fore, 



♦ Plato in PhctJro, p. 1 240. edit. Fieini. See what I have faid on this fubjed in 

 \cl. 2. of Oi-iein of Langunge, p. 24. 



