date

6 Aug. 1814 Logic 7
6 Aug. 1814

Logic

7

Ch. │ │ Methodization

'. │ │ Subalternation

2

In the scale of subalternation the two extremes are given: and[?] the [...?].

At the bottom, in the place of and as serving to constitute the trunk, with its continuation the root, he stationed the most capacious of all these aggregates, the half-corporeal, half-ideal name substance. Within the compass of this most capacious aggregate, he beheld two lesser aggregates, constituting the nearest and lowest branches of the tree: one the aggregate composed of such substances as are of a corporeal, the other of such as are of an [in]corporeal nature. Those of a corporeal, i.e. bodily, nature were in one word bodies: those of an incorporeal nature were in one spirits. At that point and without the labour of any further ramification or division he left the world of Spirits.

Taking in hand the aggregate composed of bodies, he observed that some had life in them, others not: by which word life he designated as well the sort of life ascribed to plants, viz. vegetable life, as the sort of life ascribed to animals, viz. animal life. In these then, for the corporeal branch of his ideal trunk and root, he found so many ulterior branches: one branch served for containing such bodies as had life in them; the other, such as had no life in them.

Leaving the vegetable world as before, he had left the incorporeal world undivided, he performed the operation of division in the same way with the animal world as he had proceeded with the corporeal: included in this aggregate he observed two ulterior aggregates, one in which were included all animals endowed with reason, viz. human creatures, in the other all animals not endowed with that transcendant gift: which last without further division or distinction he drove together in one flock under the name of brutes; and with these rational beings he peopled the one, as with the irrational ones the other of the two extreme branches of this emblematic and instructive tree.

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