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• Introduction
• A Note On the Text
• Acknowledgments
• A Compend of Logic
• Dissertation On the Origin of Philosophy and Its Principal Founders and Exponents 1
• Prolegomena the Definitions and Divisions of Logic
• Part I: On Apprehension
• Part II: On the Noetic Judgment and the Proposition
• Part III: On Discourse
• Appendix On Topics, Fallacies, and Method
• A Synopsis of Metaphysics Comprehending Ontology and Pneumatology Second Enlarged Edition
• Part I: On Being and the Common Attributes of Things
• Chapter 1: On Being ( De Ente )
• Chapter 2: On the Axioms of Metaphysics
• Chapter 3: On the Properties of Being
• Chapter 4: On the Principal Divisions of Being
• Chapter 5: On the Categories and the General Properties of Being
• Part II: On the Human Mind
• Chapter 1: On the Powers of the Mind, and First On the Understanding
• Chapter 2: On the Will
• Chapter 3: Whether Spirit Is a Different Thing From Body
• Chapter 4: On the Union of the Mind With the Body, and On a Separate State 1
• Part III: On God
• Chapter 1: In Which It Is Shown That There Is a God
• Chapter 2: On the Natural Virtues of God
• Chapter 3: On the Divine Virtues Concerned With Understanding
• Chapter 4: On the Will of God
• Chapter 5: On the Operations of God
• On the Natural Sociability of Mankind
• Inaugural Oration

Prolegomena The Definitions and Divisions of Logic

A faculty (habitus) is a more or less efficacious ability (facultas) to act, formed by repeated actions. Faculties are either intellectual or moral: the former strengthen and perfect the powers of the intellect, the latter the powers of the will.

There are five distinct names (they are not distinct kinds) given to our intellectual faculties: intelligence, wisdom, prudence, science, and skill, which in Greek are: nous, sophia, phronesis, episteme, techne.1 Intelligence is the faculty of first principles. Wisdom is knowledge of the most excellent things. Prudence is the faculty of acting with right reason. Science is the faculty of demonstration. Skill is the faculty of producing things with right reason. Philosophy is the whole bundle of these liberal arts, and is commonly defined as “acquisition of the knowledge (cognitio) of human and divine things, which we pursue by the sole power of human reason.” Philosophy is frequently divided into rational philosophy (or logic), natural philosophy, and moral philosophy.2 Logic is the art which directs the mind in its acquisition of knowledge of things, and may also be called science (scientia).3 Others define it as “the art of investigating and expressing truth.”4 The material object of any skill or science is the material which it treats. The formal object is the reason or purpose of treating it. The material object of logic is the intellectual operations. The formal object is to be directed to the discovery of truth. There are two natural faculties of the mind, the understanding and the will. The understanding is the faculty (facultas) which is concerned with getting to know the truth. The will is the faculty (facultas) which seeks good and avoids evil.5

There are three classes of operations in the intellect: (1) apprehension, (2) judgment, and (3) discourse; a twofold division into apprehension and judgment is also possible. Judgments are subdivided into noetic and dianoetic judgments. Hence logic is divided into three parts, defined by the kind of operation each is dealing with.6

[1 ]These were the names given by Aristotle to the intellectual or rational part of the soul in Nichomachean Ethics, bk. 6, chaps. 3-7.

[2 ]This division of philosophy was reflected in the curriculum and in the distribution of professorships in the University of Glasgow and in other Scottish universities. See Coutts, History of the University of Glasgow, pp. 207-8. Hutcheson considered it “the accepted division” in antiquity; see A Synopsis of Metaphysics, Part I, chap. 1, p. 65.

[3 ]Burgersdijk, Monitio Logica, p. 1; Aldrich, Artis Logicae Compendium, p. 3.

[4 ]Le Clerc, Logica, p. 1; Watts, “Logick,” p. 5.

[5 ]On Hutcheson’s insistence on the scholastic distinction between understanding and will, see A Synopsis of Metaphysics, Part II, chap. 1, p. 112 and n. 4.

[6 ]The tripartite division of logic into apprehension, judgment, and discourse is characteristic of the logics of the seventeenth-century English Aristotelians (Robert Sanderson, Henry Aldrich), who also make it clear that these divisions of logic refer to terms, propositions, and syllogisms. The same division of the subject was employed in logics based on ideas (by Arnauld, Le Clerc, and Watts). But all of the latter also attached importance to a fourth part of logic, which they called method. Hutcheson’s logic drew upon both traditions: initially upon the logic of ideas, and later, and more substantially, on the logic of the Aristotelians. His discussion of method was located, with topics and fallacies, in an appendix: see p. 54.