88 MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 



ought not to be charged as any impeachment of the 

 labours of the Stagirite. His four books of Analytics 

 divided into Prior and Posterior, testify how dis- 

 tinct and comprehensive a view he took of this dry 

 and apparently barren subject. The reader cannot 

 fail to mark the exactness of his rules for the con- 

 version of one proposition into another ; and to ad- 

 mit the special claim he has to the invention of To- 

 pics, or general heads of every species of question or 

 argument, together with the most pertinent and ad- 

 vantageous methods of treating them. By way of 

 generalizing this science, he has arranged all the ob- 

 jects of human thought that can be expressed by 

 " single words, under ten Categories or Predicaments ; 

 and in explaining the nature and properties of each, 

 he has opened up to the inquisitive mind a wide 

 field of syllogistic information. The preceding trea- 

 tises, including one book of Interpretation, one of 

 Sophisms, and eight of Topics, form collectively 

 what is now called Aristotle's Organum, or Logic ; 

 a work admirably calculated for sharpening the un- 

 derstanding and expanding the intellectual faculties ; 

 but a work which has been often as grossly misrepre- 

 sented, as it was long most wofully misapplied du- 

 ring those ages when scholastic jargon had usurped 

 the name and the seats of philosophy. 



In his three books on Rhetoric, Aristotle has dis- 

 played the same extent and variety of learning as in 

 his Ethics. He treats it not merely as the science 

 of eloquence and composition, but as the art of per 



