TIIE FOURTH PART OF LOGIC, Of Disposition and Method. IT is not merely a clear and distinct idea, a well formed proposition, or a just argument, that is sufficient to search out and . communicate the knowledge of a subject. There must be a variety and series of them disposed in a due manner, in order to attain this end ; and therefore it is the design of the last part of Logic, to teach us the art of method. It is that must secure our thoughts from that confusion, darkness and mistake, which una- voidably attend the meditations and discourses even of the bright- est genius who despises the rules of it. I. We shall here consider the nature of method, and the several kinds of it. II. Lay down the general rules of method, with a few particulars under them. CHAP. I. Of the Nature of Method and the several Kinds of it, namely, Natural and Arbitrary, Synthetic and Analytic. METHOD, taken in the largest sense implies the " placing -of several things, or performing several operations; in such an order, ás is most convenient to attain some end proposed :" and in this sense it is applied to all the,works of nature and art, to all the divine affairs of creation and providence ; and to the artifices, schemes, contrivances, and practices of mankind, whether in na- tural, civil, or sacred affairs. Now this orderly disposition of things includes the ideas of prior, posterior, and simultaneous ; of superior, inferior, and equal ; of beginning, end, and middle, &c. which are described more particularly among the general affections of being, in .ontology. But in Logic method is usually taken in a more limited sense, and the nature of it is thus described : "Method is the disposition of a variety of thoughts on any subject, in such order as may best serve to find out unknown truths, to explain and con- firm truths that are known, or to fix them in the memory." It is distributed into two different kinds, namely, natural and arbitrary. Natural method is that which observes the order of nature, and proceeds in such a manner, as that the knowledge of the things which follows, depends in a great ufeasure on the
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