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LETTER IX. 
YOU will hardly find yourfelf fettled in 
your cell, before you will be informed 
by Come of your fellow Students, that you 
are to read Logickj a Science of which you 
cannot have formed any idea. It is derived 
from Aoyo$,fermo, verbum, and was at firft 
confidered as the art of converting or rather 
difputing. Zeno, a Greek philofopher, who 
lived about 450 years before Chrift, is faid 
to have been the inventor of this art, if an 
art it may be called. It was afterwards 
particularly cultivated by the Greek feel: of 
of philofophers, called the Peripatetics, of 
whom Ariftotle was the chief. 
When you are better acquainted with the 
hiftory of literature, you will learn, that, 
after the deftruclion of the Roman empire, 
many ages elapfed before the revival of any 
art or fcience. You will alfo learn, that, 
after this revival, 1 the writings of Ariftotle 
became the Gofpel of Philofophy, and that 
his books were clafiical in every part of Eu- 
rope till the beginning of the laft century. 
About that time Des Cartes, publifhed a 
new 
