20 Oct. 1814

Logic

9

Methodization

Ch.

Saunderson p.166

15

Examine Condillac's Logic, by whom denomination[?] is called analysis: and the more pointedly[?] the more extreme the term employed: i.e. the further synthesis is pushed. Dissolving a genus into its species this indeed is analysis.

Unfortunate indeed have been, from the earliest times known to us, these two magnificent species of method, the analytic and the synthetic: a decompounding method which decompounds, and a compounding method which, instead of compounding, decompounds likewise.

Frequent indeed is it to see these two terms especially the word analytic, and its conjugates analysis and analyse, brought to view: never it is believed from the supposed distinction from the supposed contrast has any light been diffused. To the word analysis when standing by itself its proper meaning seems not unfrequently to be annext: but where, as significative of the opposite meaning, the word synthesis is introduced, such is the effect, between the one and the other, both the meaning of the one and of the other are wrapped in clouds.

In Algebra, quantity is considered without regard to figure: in Geometry, not but with regard to figure. The Algebraical is termed the analytic method: the geometrical, the synthetic. But in either of them, what is there either of analysis or of synthesis - of decomposition or of composition - more than in the other.

In both instances, the ideas belonging to them are abstract - general: extensive, in the extreme: in the instance of algebra still more so than in the other, the idea of figure being laid out of the case, and nothing left but that of quantity. But still, in either, what is there of analysis more than of synthesis. The parts of a geometrical proposition are put together, and so are those of an algebraical investigation, and here we have Synthesis. The parts of which they are respectively composed may be considered one after another in the one case and so may they in the other: and here we have analysis.