7 July 1821

Logic

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A percepible real entuty is in one word a body.

The name substance has by the Logicians of former times

been used to comprise perceptible and inferential real entities: souls, God, angels, devils have been designated by them by the appellation substance.

The name body is the name of the genus generalissimum of that class of real entities.

Under this genus generalissimum, a system of divisions which has for its limit the aggregate of all distinguishable individual bodies, may be pursued through as many stages as are found conducive to the purposes of discourse, at any such stage, and at any number of such stages, the mode of division may be bifurcate* and exhaustive, i.e. all-comprehensive.

The division according to which bodies are spoken of as subjects of one or other of the three physical kingdoms, viz. animal, vegetable, and mineral, is a trifurcate division. By substituting to this one stage of division, two stages, each of them bifurcate, the division may be rendered, or rather shown to be, exhaustive: as thus.

A body is either endued with life, or not endued with life.

A body endued with life, is either endued with sensitive life, or with life not sensitive. A body endued with sensitive life, is an animal; a body endued with a life not sensitive, is a vegetable; a body not endued with life, is a mineral.

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