8s4 LOGIC: OR, TIE WIGHT" USE Or REASON. V. Divide every subject according to the special design you have in view. One and the same idea or subject may be divided in very different manners, according to the different purposes we have in discoursing of it. So if a printer were to consider the several parts of a book, he must divide it into sheets, the sheets into pages, the pages into lines, and the lines into letters. But a grammarian dividesa book into periods, sentences and words, or parts of speech, as noun, pronoun, verb, &c. A logician consi- ders a book as divided into chapters, sections, arguments, propo- sitions, ideas ; and, with the help of ontology, he divides the pro - positions, into subject, object, property, relation, action, passion, cause, effect, &c. But it would be very ridiculous for a logician to divide a book into sheets, pages and lines or for a printer to divide it into nouns and pronouns, or into propositions, ideas, pro- perties, or causes. . VI. In all your divisions observe with greatest exactness the nature of things. And here I am constrained to make a subdivi- sionof this rule into two very necessary particulars. (I) Let the parts of your division be such as are properly distinguished in nature. Do not, divide asunder those partsof the idea which are intimately united in nature, nor unite those things into one part which nature has evidently disjoined : thus it Would be very improper, in treating of an animal body, to divide it into the superior and inferior halves ; for it would be hard to Ray how much belongs by nature to the inferior half, and bow muck to the superior. Much more improper would it be still to divide the animal into the right hand parts and left hand parts, which would bring greater confusion. This would be as unnatu- ral as if a man should cleave a teasel -nut in halves through the husk, the shell, and thekernel, at once, and say, a nut is divided into these two parts ; whereas nature leads plainly to the three - fold distinction of husk, shell, and kernel. (2) Do net affect duplicities, nor triplicities, nor any certain number of parts in your division of things ; for we know of no such certain number of parts which God the creator has observed in forming all the varieties of his creatures ; nor is there any uni- form determined number of parts in the various subjects of hu- man art or science ; yet some persons have disturbed the order of nature, and abused their readers, by an affectation of dichotomies, trichotomies, sevens, twelves, m-c. Let the nature of the subject, considered together with the design which you have in view, always determine the number of parts in which you divide it. After all, it must be confessed that an intimate knowledge of things, and a judicious observation, will assist in the business of division, as well as of definition, better than too nice and cu 'ions an Attention to the mere formalities of logical writers, with- out a real acyuaintanee.with things.
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