Logic and Rhetoric) and confine ourselves to the analytical, that is to say, UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR. In this we shall follow the Order, that we have above laid down, first dividing SPEECH, as a WHOLE, into its CONSTITUENT PARTS; then resolving it, as a COMPOSITE, into its MATTER and FORM; two Methods of Analysis very different in their kind, and which lead to a variety of very different Speculations.

SHOULD any one object, that in the course of our Inquiry we sometimes descend to things, which appear trivial and low; let him look upon the effects, to which those things contribute, then from the Dignity of the Consequences, let him honour the Principles.

THE following Story may not improperly be here inserted. "When the "Fame of Heraclitus was celebrated throughout Greece, there were cer

Ch. I.

Ch. I.

tain Persons, that had a curiosity to "see so great a Man. They came, and,

66

66

as it happened, found him warming "himself in a Kitchen. The meanness "of the place occasioned them to stop; upon which the Philosopher thus ac"costed them-ENTER, (says he) BOLD66 LY, FOR HERE TOO THERE "GODS(e)."

ARE

WE shall only add, that as there is no part of Nature too mean for the Divine Presence; so there is no kind of Subject, having its foundation in Nature, that is below the Dignity of a philosophical Inquiry.

(e) See Aristot. de Part. Animal. 1. 1. c. 5.

CHAP.

CHAP. II.

Concerning the Analysing of Speech into its smallest Parts.

THOSE

HOSE things which are first to Na- Ch. II. ture, are not first to Man. Nature begins from Causes, and thence descends to Effects. Human Perceptions first open upon Effects, and thence by slow degrees ascend to Causes. Often had Mankind seen the Sun in Eclipse, before they knew its Cause to be the Moon's Interposition; much oftener had they seen those unceasing Revolutions of Summer and Winter, of Day and Night, before they knew the Cause to be the Earth's double Motion (a).

Even
in

(a) This Distinction of first to Man, and first to Nature, was greatly regarded in the Peripatetic Philosophy.— See Arist. Phys. Auscult. 1. 1. c. 1. Themistius's Comment on the same, Poster. Analyt. 1. 1. c. 2. De Anima,

1. 2. c. 2.

Ch. II. in Matters of Art and human Creation, if we except a few Artists and critical

1. 2. c. 2. It leads us, when properly regarded, to a very Important Distinction between Intelligence Divine and Intelligence Human. God may be said to view the First, as first; and the Last, as last; that is, he views Effects through Causes in their natural Order. MAN views the Last, as first; and the First, as last; that is, he views Causes through Effects, in an inverse Order, and hence the Meaning of that Passage in Aristotle: womep yàp rà τῶν νυκτερίδων ὄμματα πρὸς τὸ φέγγῶ ἔχει τὸ μεθ ̓ ἡμέραν, ὅτω καὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας ψυχῆς ὁ Νῆς πρὸς τὰ τῇ φύσει φανερώτατα Távy. As are the Eyes of Bats to the Light of the Day, so is Man's Intelligence to those Objects, that are by Nature the brightest and most conspicuous of all things. Metaph. 1. 2. c. 1. See also 1. 7. c. 4. and Ethic. Nicom. 1. 1. c. 4. Ammonius, reasoning in the same way, says very pertinently to the Subject of this Treatise-'Ayxπτὸν τῇ ἀνθρωπίνη φύσει, ἐκ τῶν ἀτελετέρων καὶ συνθέτων ἐπὶ τὰ ἁπλέτερα καὶ τελειότερα προϊέναι· τὰ γὰρ συνθέτα μᾶλλον συνήθη ἡμῖν, καὶ γνωριμώτερα· Ουτω γῆν καὶ ὁ παῖς εἶραι μὲν λόγον, και ἐιπεῖν, Σωκράτης περιπατεῖ, οἶδε· τἔτον δὲ ἀναλύσαι εἰς ὄνομα κα ῥῆμα, καὶ ταῦτα εἰς συλλαβὰς, κἀκεῖνα εἰς ςοιχεῖα, ἐκέτι Human Nature may be well contented to advance from the more imperfect and complex to the more simple and perfect; for the complex Subjects are more familiar to us, and better known. Thus therefore it is that even a Child knows how to put a Sentence together, and say, Socrates walketh; but how to resolve this Sentence into a Noun

and

tical Observers, the rest look no higher Ch. II. than to the Practice and mere Work, knowing nothing of those Principles, on which the whole depends.

THUS in SPEECH for example-All men, even the lowest, can speak their Mother-Tongue. Yet how many of this multitude can neither write, nor even read? How many of those, who are thus far literate, know nothing of that Grammar, which respects the Genius of their own language? How few then must be those, who know GRAMMAR UNIVERSAL; that Grammar, which without regarding the several Idioms of particular Languages, only respects those Principles, that are essential to them all?

Tis our present Design to inquire about this Grammar; in doing which we shall

and Verb, and these again into Syllables, and Syllables into Letters or Elements, here he is at a loss. Am, in Com. de Prædic, p. 29.