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of a city. All these species of judging are peculiar 

 to men, and not enjoyed by brutes in any degree. 



Another act of the intellect, generally reduced to 

 judgment, is abstraction. This some suppose to be 

 performed, by drawing the mind off from all ideas of 

 sensation, from all compositions of them, and from 

 all complex notions, in order to form ideas of incor- 

 poreal beings. But it may be doubted, whether this 

 be practicable in our present slate. 



The true abstraction seems to consist, not in form- 

 ing ideas independent on sensation, but in substituting 

 the only notions we have, which are natural, easy, 

 and familiar, to represent those supernatural things, 

 of which otherwise we can have no notion ; in trans- 

 ferring our thoughts from the literal propriety of the 

 words, by which we express them, to that analogical 

 signification, whereby they are, as it were, spiritual- 

 ized. This scents to be the only abstraction we are 

 capable of, with regard to things spiritual. And this 

 is so far from being independent on sensation, and 

 the operations of the intellect, that we en no other- 

 wise* think or speak of such objects, than in these 

 worldly and human symbols; and that, if we abstract 

 from these, we abstract from all thought of heavenly 

 beings, and can have neither names nor ideas for 

 them 



What has been hitherto said of the operations of 

 the intellect, relates only to ideas of sensation. 

 Therefore it is proper to observe here, that the same 

 operations are likewise exercised upon all our al- 



