SSO LOGIC: OR THE RIGHT USE OF REASON. morality, are suffièiently known to us to Make perfect definitions of them, will appear by the specimen of a few definitions of these things. Motion is a change of place. Swiftneis is the passing over a long space in a short time. A natural day is the time of one alternate revolution of light and darkness, or it is the duration of twenty -four hours. An eclipse of the sun is a defect in the sun's transmigration of light to us by the moon interposing. * Snow is congealed vapour. * Hail is congealed rain. , An *' island is a piece of land rising above the surrounding water. An * hill is an elevated part of the earth, and a * grove is a piece of ground thick set with trees. An house is a building made to dwell in. A cottage is a mean house in the country. A supper is that meal which we make in the evening. A tri- angle is a figure composed of three sides. A gallon is a measure containing eight pints. A porter is a man who carries burdens for hire. A king is the chief ruler in a kingdom. Veracity is the conformity of our words to our thought. Covetousness is an excessive love for money, or other possessions. Killing is the taking away the life of an animal. Murder is the unlawful kil- ling of a man. Rhetoric is the art of speaking in a manner fit to persuade. Natural philosophy is the knowledge of the pro- perties of bodies, and the various effects of them, or it is the knowledge of the various appearances in nature, and their causes ; and Logic is the art of uting our reason well, &c. Thus you see the essential differences of various beings may be known, and are borrowed from their qualities and properties, their causes, effects, objects, adjuncts, ends, &c. and indeed is infinitely various as the essences of things are, their definitions must needs have various forms. After' all, it must be confessed, that many logicians and philosophers in the former ages, have made too great a bustle . about the exactness of their definitions of things, and entered into long fruitless controversies, and very ridiculous debates in the several sciences, about adjusting the logical formalities of every definition ; whereas that sort of wrangling is now grown very justly contemptible since it is agreed that true learning and the knowledge of things depends much more upon a large acquaintance with their various properties, causes, effects, subject, object, ends and designs, than it does upon the arinal and scho- lastic niceties of genus and deference. a Note .r Island, hill, grove," are not designed here in their more remote and substantial natures of I may so express it) or as the Matter of them is earth ;for in this sense we know cot their essence, but only as considered in their " modal a» pearances," whereby one port of earth is distinguished from. another. The same may be eaidof snow, had, &c.
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