260 REASONING. 



sity, in particulars ; but our knowledge may, in cases 

 of a certain description, be conceived as coming to us 

 from other sources than observation. It may present 

 itself as coming from revelation ; and the knowledge, 

 thus supernaturally communicated, may be conceived 

 to comprise not only particular facts but general 

 propositions, such as occur so abundantly in the 

 writings of Solomon and in the apostolic epistles. Or 

 the generalization may not be, in the ordinary sense, 

 an assertion at all, but a command ; a law, not in the 

 philosophical, but in the moral and political sense of 

 the term : an expression of the desire of a superior, 

 that we, or any number of other persons, shall con- 

 form our conduct to certain general instructions. So 

 far as this asserts a fact, namely, a volition of the 

 legislator, that fact is an individual fact, and the pro- 

 position, therefore,, is not a general proposition. But 

 the description therein contained of the conduct 

 which it is the will of the legislator that his subjects 

 should observe, is general. The proposition asserts, 

 not that all men are anything, but that all men shall 

 do something. These two cases, of a truth revealed 

 in general terms,, and a command intimated in the 

 like manner, might be exchanged for the more 

 extensive cases, of any general statement received 

 upon testimony, and any general practical precept. 

 But the more limited illustrations suit us better, being 

 drawn from subjects where long and complicated 

 trains of ratiocination have actually been grounded 

 upon premisses which came to mankind from the first 

 in a general form, the subjects of Scriptural Theology 

 and of positive Law. 



In both these cases the generalities are given to 

 us, and the particulars are elicited from them by a 

 process which correctly resolves itself into a series of 



