Of the relation which eloquence bears to logic and to grammar.

rent, as the breath of the Almighty and the dust of the earth. In every region of the globe, we may soon discover, that people feel and argue much in the same manner, but the speech of one nation is quite unintelligible to another. The art of the logician is accordingly, in some sense, universal, the art of the grammarian is always particular and local. The rules of argumentation laid down by Aristotle, in his Analytics, are of as much use for the discovery of truth in Britain or in China, as they were in Greece; but Priscian's rules of inflection and construction, can assist us in learning no language but Latin. In propriety there cannot be such a thing as an universal grammar, unless there were such a thing as an universal language. The term hath sometimes, indeed, been applied to a collection of observations on the similar analogies that have been discovered in all tongues, ancient and modern, known to the authors of such collections. I do not mention this liberty in the use of the term with a view to censure it. In the application of technical or learned words, an author hath greater scope, than in the application of those which are in more frequent use, and is only then thought censurable, when he exposeth himself to be misunderstood. But it is to my purpose to observe, that as such collections convey the knowledge of no tongue whatever, the name grammar, when applied to them, is used in a sense quite different from that which it has in the common acceptation; perhaps as different, though the subject be language, as when it is applied to a system of geography.

Of the relation which eloquence bears to logic and to grammar.

Now the grammatical art hath its completion in syntax; the oratorical, as far as the body or expression is concerned, in style. Syntax regards only the composition of many words into one sentence; style, at the same time that it attends to this, regards further, the composition of many sentences into one discourse. Nor is this the only difference; the grammarian, with respect to what the two arts have in common, the structure of sentences, requires only purity; that is, that the words employed belong to the language, and that they be construed in the manner, and used in the signification, which custom hath rendered necessary for conveying the sense. The orator requires also beauty and strength. The highest aim of the former, is the lowest aim of the latter; where grammar ends, eloquence begins.

THUS the grammarian's department bears much the same relation to the orator's, which the art of the mason bears to that of the architect. There is, however, one difference, that well deserves our notice. As in architecture it is not necessary that he who designs, should execute his own plans, he may be an excellent artist in this way, who would handle very aukwardly the hammer and the trowel. But it is alike incumbent on the orator, to design and to execute. He must therefore be master of the language he speaks or writes, and must be capable of adding to grammatic purity, those higher qualities of elocution, which will render his discourse graceful and energetic.

So much for the connexion that subsists between rhetoric and these parent arts, logic and grammar.

CHAP V.

Of the different sources of Evidence, and the different subjects to which they are respectively adapted.

LOGICAL truth consisteth in the conformity of our conception to their archetypes in the nature of things. This conformity is perceived by the mind, either immediately on a bare attention to the ideas under review, or mediately by a comparison of these with other related ideas. Evidence of the former kind is called intuitive; of the latter, deductive.

SECT. I.-Of Intuitive Evidence,

PART I....Mathematical axioms.

OF intuitive evidence there are different sorts. One is that which results purely from intellection *.

Of

* I have here adopted the term intellection rather than perception, because, though not so usual, it is both more apposite, and less equivocal. Perception is employed alike to denote every immediate object of thought, or whatever is apprehended by the mind, our sensations themselves, and those qualities in body, suggested by our sensations, the ideas of these upon reflection, whether remembered

this kind is the evidence of these propositions, "One "and four make five. Things equal to the same thing, are equal to one another. The whole is

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greater than a part ;" and, in brief, all axioms in arithmetic and geometry. These are in effect but so many different expositions of our own general notions, taken in different views. Some of them are no other than definitions, or equivalent to definitions. To say, "One and four make five," is precisely the same as to say, "We give the name five to one added to four." In fact, they are all, in some respect, reducible to this axiom, "Whatever is, is." I do not say, they are deduced from it, for they have in like manner that original and intrinsic evidence, which makes them, as soon as the terms are understood, to be perceived intuitively. And if they are not thus perceived, no deduction of reason will ever confer on them any additional evidence. Nay, in point of time, the discovery of the less general truths has the priority, not from their superior evidence, but solely from this consideration, that the less general are sooner objects of perception to us, the natural progress of the mind in the acquisition of its ideas, being from particular things to universal notions, and not inversely. But I affirm, that, though

or imagined, together with those called general notions, or abstract ideas. It is only the last of these kinds which are considered as peculiarly the object of the understanding, and which, therefore, require to be distinguished by a peculiar name. Obscurity arising from an uncommon word, is easily surmounted, whereas ambiguity, by misleading us, erę we are aware, confounds our notion of the subject altogether.

not deduced from that axiom, they may be considered as particular exemplifications of it, and coincident with it, inasmuch as they are all implied in this, that the properties of our clear and adequate ideas can be no other than what the mind clearly perceives them

to be.

BUT, in order to prevent mistakes, it will be necessary further to illustrate this subject. It might be thought, that if axioms were propositions perfectly identical, it would be impossible to advance a step, by their means, beyond the simple ideas first perceived by the mind. And, it must be owned, if the predicate of the proposition were nothing but a repetition of the subject, under the same aspect, and in the same or synonimous terms, no conceivable advantage could be made of it for the furtherance of knowledge. Of such propositions as these, for instance, "Seven äre "seven," 66 eight are eight," and "ten added to eleven, are equal to ten added to eleven," it is manifest, that we could never avail ourselves for the improvement of science. Nor does the change of the term make any alteration in point of utility. The propositions," Twelve are a dozen," twenty are a "score," unless considered as explications of the words dozen and score, are equally insignificant with the former. But when the thing, though in effect coinciding, is considered under a different aspect; when what is single in the subject, is divided in the predicate, and conversely; or when what is a whole in the one, is regarded as a part of something else in the o

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