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 eveiy 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 
