CHAP. XXII.] CONSTITUTION OF THE INTELLECT. 401 



ledge, of an absolute decision, may receive so much of reflected 

 information as to render their probable solution not difficult ; and 

 there may also be questions relating to the nature of science, and 

 even to particular truths and doctrines of science, upon which 

 they who accept the general principles of this work cannot but be 

 led to entertain positive opinions, differing, it may be, from those 

 which are usually received in the present day.* In what fol- 

 lows I shall recapitulate some of the more definite conclusions 

 established in the former parts of this treatise, and shall then 

 indicate one or two trains of thought, connected with the gene- 

 ral objects above adverted to, which they seem to me calculated 

 to suggest. 



3. Among those conclusions, relating to the intellectual con- 

 stitution, which may be considered as belonging to the realm of 

 positive knowledge, we may reckon the scientific laws of thought 

 and reasoning, which have formed the basis of the general me- 

 thods of this treatise, together with the principles, Chap, v., by 

 which their application has been determined. The resolution of 

 the domain of thought into two spheres, distinct but coexistent 

 (IV. XI.) ; the subjection of the intellectual operations within 

 those spheres to a common system of laws (XI.); the general 

 mathematical character of those laws, and their actual expression 

 (II. III.) ; the extent of their affinity with the laws of thought in 

 the domain of number, and the point of their divergence there- 

 from ; the dominant character of the two limiting conceptions of 

 universe and eternity among all the subjects of thought with 

 which Logic is concerned ; the relation of those conceptions to 

 the fundamental conception of unity in the science of number, 

 these, with many similar results, are not to be ranked as merely 



* The following illustration may suffice : 



It is maintained by some of the highest modern authorities in grammar that 

 conjunctions connect propositions only. Now, without inquiring directly whe- 

 ther this opinion is sound or not, it is obvious that it cannot consistently beheld 

 by any who admit the scientific principles of this treatise ; for to such it would 

 seem to involve a denial, either, 1st, of the possibility of performing, or 2ndly, of 

 the possibility of expressing, a mental operation, the laws of which, viewed in 

 both these relations, have been investigated and applied in the present work. 

 (Latham on the English Language; Sir John Stoddart's Universal Gram- 

 mar, &c.) 



2 D 



