date

6 Aug. 1814 Logic 5
6 Aug. 1814

Logic

5

Ch. │ │ Methodization

'. │ │ Subalternation

5

Under the direction of an attentive observer, Geography serves in some sort for supplying the deficiencies left by History. The description of nations exhibiting themselves on different levels in the scale of improvement, or to speak more precisely having before them fields of observation of different extent, serve when put together to exhibit a simultaneous view of no inconsiderable portion of the history of mankind.

In this view the most curious, and to the purpose of instruction the most valuable, chapter in this sort of contemporary history would be composed of the vocabulary - if a compleat one could be obtained - of a tribe the seat of which, even supposing it have all along been there, [was] in the narrowest field as yet known: in a small and thinly inhabited island or cluster of islands, destitute of communication with any other inhabited portion of the globe.

At Otaheite, at the time of the discovery of that groupe of Islands, dogs and hogs being - unless rats were an exception - the only quadrupeds with which the human part of its inhabitants were acquainted, they had we may be well assured no denomination answering in point of extent to our word quadruped, still less to our word animal. When to their astonished eyes a horse first presented itself it was classed by them with dogs: it was designated among them by the same common and aggregating name. The hog species was as familiar to them as the dog: but from its being the name of dog and not that of hog that by them was bestowed upon the first-seen horse, it appears that in their eyes it was to the dog and not to the hog species that the horse bore the closest resemblance.

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    "3 The more friendly understanding exists between the natives "of Otaheite

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    l legal.

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    The sweets of Otaheite will now be converted into liquid poison: the

    hair of their Insular Majestys and their

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  • Title: [6 Aug. 1814 + Logic Section]
    Description: 6 Aug. 1814 +

    Logic

    Section 6

    Of the Porphyrian Tree.

    6

    Ch. │ │ Methodization

    '. │ │ Subalternation

    1

    The minuteness of the distinction giving rise to so many names depends on the experienced demand for distinction. Sheep species Ewe, Ram & Weather. Bos species Cow Bull and Ox. Canine species Dog & Bitch. Cat species no difference of gender: both served alike to catch Mice. The pronoun he & she served for these & other animals. Horse & Mare: gelding more recent. Boar & Sow.

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    In the track of generalization such among that ingenious people had been even before - no one knows how long before - the days of Aristotle: he found rising one above another in that scale words in the Greek language employed as the names of the following aggregates, 1 Man {and Brute}. 2. animal. 3. living thing. 4 body. 5 substance.

    In addition to those objects the existence of which is made known to sense, for designating other objects, the idea of which is presented to us only by abstraction, the work of imagination, while their existence is pointed out to us by inference, he found already in use a word corresponding to our word substance.

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