A BRIEF SCHEME OP ONTOLOGY : OR THE Science of Being in General; Wherein all the various Affections, or Properties, Adjuncts and Relations of it are contracted into a comprehensive View, and ranged in a natural and easy Method: CHAP. I. Of Being and Not -being, with a general Scheme of , the Affections of Being. ONTOLOGY is a discourse of being in general, and the various and most universal modes or affections, as well as the several kinds or divisions of it. The word being here includes not only whatsoever actually is, but whatsoevercan be. Being is the first and- most obvious, the most simple and natural con- ception that we can frame of any thing. which we see, hear, feel, or know. It is in some sense included in all our other concep tions of things, and is therefore the most general or universal of all our ideas. By the affections of being are meant all powers, properties, accidents, relations, actions, passions, dispositions, internal qualities, external adjuncts, considerations, conditions or circum- stances whatsoever; in a word; all those modes which belong to things, eitheras they are in themselves, or as they stand in rela- tion to other things, or as they are represented or modified; by Mir ideas and conceptions. Since every . thing may be greatly distinguished and illustrated by its opposites, here we begin to treat of the affections of being in general, we may consider very briefly what sort of notions we may frame of not-being or nothing. Not - being, as it excludes all substances and modes whatso- ever, is nihility or mere nothing. Not -being, as it excludes particular modes or manners of being out of any substance, may be considered, either as a mere negation, such is blindness or want of sight is a stone ; or as a privation, such is blindness or want of sight in a man ; ofwhich see Logic, part 1st, chap. Il. sect. 6. Note 1. Pure nothing considered merely in itself lias no proper affections belonging to it; though our imagination some- times may so far abuse us as to mistake nothing for something, as in the case of shadows; and at other times we mistake some- thing for nothing, and suppose a room full of light and air xh
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