The Elements of Logic

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 5] 3lntromiction. Sec. I....Importance of the Knowledge of Oursehis. . OF all the human sciences, that concerning man is certainly the most worthy of man, and the most necessary part of knowledge. We find ourseh'es in this world surrounded with a variety of objects: we have powers and faculties fitted to...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 5] 3lntromiction. Sec. I....Importance of the Knowledge of Oursehis. . OF all the human sciences, that concerning man is certainly the most worthy of man, and the most necessary part of knowledge. We find ourseh'es in this world surrounded with a variety of objects: we have powers and faculties fitted to deal with them, and are happy or miserable in proportion as we know how to frame a right judgment of things, and shape our actions agreeably to the circumstances in which we are placed. No study, therefore, is more important than that which introduces us to the knowledge of ourselves. Hereby we become acquainted with the extent and capacity o the human mind; and learning to distinguish what objects it is suited to, and in what manner it must proceed in order to compass its ends, we arrive by degrees, at that justness and truth of understanding, which is the great perfection of a rational being. Sec. I....Different gradations of Perfection in Things. If we look attentively into things, and survey them in their full extent, we see them rising one above another in various degrees of eminence. Among the inanimate parts of matter, some exhibit nothing worthy our attention: their parts seem as it were jumbled together by mere chance%nor can we discover any beauty, order, or regularity in their composition. In others, we discern the finest arrangement, and a certain elegance of contexture, that makes us affix to them a notion of worth and excellence. Thus metals, and precious stones, are conceived as far surpassing those unformed masses of earth, that lie every where exposed to view. If we trace nature onward, and pursue her through the vegetable and animal kingdoms, we find her still multiplying her perfections, and rising, by a just gradation, from mere mechanism to p...