DEFINITION AND PROVINCE OF LOGIC. 5 



sideration of Khetoric, in the large sense in which that art 

 was conceived hy the ancients ; or of the still more extensive 

 art of Education. Logic takes cognizance of our intellectual 

 operations, only as they conduce to our own knowledge, and 

 to our command over that knowledge for our own uses. If 

 there were hut one rational being in the universe, that being 

 might be a perfect logician; and the science and art of logic 

 would be the same for that one person as for the whole 

 human race. 



4. But, if the definition which we formerly examined 

 included too little, that which is now suggested has the oppo 

 site fault of including too much. 



Truths are known to us in two ways : some are known 

 directly, and of themselves ; some through the medium of 

 other truths. The former are the subject of Intuition, or Con 

 sciousness ;* the latter, of Inference. The truths known by 

 intuition are the original premises from which all others are 

 inferred. Our assent to the conclusion being grounded on the 

 truth of the premises, we never could arrive at any knowledge 

 by reasoning, unless something could be known antecedently 

 to all reasoning. 



Examples of truths known to us by immediate conscious 

 ness, are our own bodily sensations and mental feelings. I 

 know directly, and of my own knowledge, that I was vexed 

 yesterday, or that I am hungry to-day. Examples of truths 

 which we know only by way of inference, are occurrences 

 which took place while we were absent, the events recorded in 

 history, or the theorems of mathematics. The two former we 

 infer from the testimony adduced, or from the traces of those 

 past occurrences which still exist ; the latter, from the pre 

 mises laid down in books of geometry, under the title of defi 

 nitions and axioms. Whatever we are capable of knowing 



* I use these terms indiscriminately, because, for the purpose in view, there 

 is no need for making any distinction between them. But metaphysicians 

 usually restrict the name Intuition to the direct knowledge we are supposed to 

 have of things external to our minds, and Consciousness to our knowledge of 

 our own mental phenomena. 



