beings than one; as by the jesuits in their declaration prefixed to the third book of Newton, alienam coacti sumus gerere personam. The word person then, according to the received sense in all classical authors, standing for a certain guise, character, quality, i. e. being in fact a mixed mode, or relation, and not a substance; we must next inquire, what particular character or quality it stands for in this place, as the same man may bear many characters and relations at the same, or different times. The answer is, that here it stands for that particular quality or character, under which a man is considered, when he is treated as an intelligent being subject to government and laws, and accountable for his actions: i. e. not the man himself, but an abstract consideration of him, for such and such particular ends : and to inquire after its identity is to inquire, not after the identity of a conscious being, but after the identity of a quality or attribute of such a conscious being. All difficulties that relate to a man's forgetting some actions, &c. now vanish, when person is considered as a character, and not a substance, or confounded with homo gerens personam: and it amounts to no more than saying, a man puts on a mask-continuing to wear it for some time-puts off one mask and takes another, i. e. appears to have consciousness-to recollect past consciousnesses -does not recollect them, &c. The impropriety consists in saying, a man is the same person with him who did such a fact; which is the same as to say, a man is blackness, guilt, &c. i. e. a mixed mode is predicated of a substance; whereas it ought to be, in strict propriety of speech, the person of the man who did such a fact, is the same with the person of him who now stands before us; or, in plainer terms, the man who now stands before the court is conscious of the former facts, and is therefore the proper object of punishment. It may be observed, that the word personality is really an absurd expression: since person itself stands for the mixed mode or quality;-and personality therefore may be ranked among the old scholastic terms of corporeity, egoity, tableity, &c. or is even yet more harsh; as mixed modes, such as gratitude, murder, and therefore person, cannot be thus re-modified without peculiar absurdity. OF OF THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Quid tam temerarium tamque indignum sapientis gravitate atque constantiâ, quam aut falsum sentire, aut quod non satis exploratè perceptum sit, & cognitum, sine ullâ dubitatione defendere? Cic. de Natura Deorum, lib. 1. §. 1. ΤΗ Introduction. HE last resort a man has recourse to, in the conduct of himself, is his understanding: for though we distinguish the faculties of the mind, and give the supreme command to the will, as to an agent; yet the truth is, the man, who is the agent, determines himself to this, or that, voluntary action, upon some precedent knowledge, or appearance of knowledge in the understanding. No man ever sets himself about any thing, but upon some view, or other, which serves him for a reason for what he does and whatsoever faculties he employs, the understanding, with such light as it has, well or ill informed, constantly leads; and by that light, true or false, all his operative powers are directed. The will itself, how absolute and uncontrollable soever it may be thought, never fails in its obedience to the dictates of the understanding. Temples have their sacred images, and and we see what influence they have always had over a great part of mankind. But, in truth, the ideas and images in men's minds are the invisible powers, that constantly govern them; and to these they all universally pay a ready submission. It is, therefore, of the highest concernment, that great care should be taken of the understanding, to conduct it right, in the search of knowledge, and in the judgment it makes. The logic, now in use, has so long possessed the chair, as the only art taught in the schools, for the direction of the mind, in the study of the arts and sciences, that it would perhaps be thought an affectation of novelty to suspect, that rules, that have served the learned world these two or three thousand years, and which, without any complaint of defects, the learned have rested in, are not sufficient to guide the understanding. And I should not doubt, but this attempt would be censured as vanity, or presumption, did not the great lord Verulam's authority justify it; who, not servilely thinking learning could not be advanced beyond what it was, because for many ages it had not been, did not rest in the lazy approbation and applause of what was, because it was; but enlarged his mind to what it might be. In his preface to his Novum Organum, concerning logic, he pronounces thus, "Qui summas dialecticæ partes tribue"runt, atque inde fidissima scientiis præsidia comparari putârunt, verissimè et optimè viderunt intellectum "humanum, sibi permissum, meritò suspectum esse de"bere. Verum infirmior omninò est malo medicina; "nec ipsa mali expers. Siquidem dialectica, quæ recepta est, licet ad civilia et artes, quæ in sermone et opinione positæ sunt, rectissimè adhibeatur; naturæ tamen subtilitatem longo intervallo non attingit, et "prensando quod non capit, ad errores potius stabili"endos et quasi figendos, quam ad viam veritati aperi"endam valuit.' They, says he, who attributed so much to logic, perceived very well and truly, that it was not safe to trust the understanding to itself without the guard of any rules. But the remedy reached not the evil, but "became a part of it: for the logic, which took place, "though |