that fuch food would make them have fmall eyes, held by them a great deformity. They alfo abftain from eating turtle; which they think would infect them with the laziness and stupidity of that animal. Upon the fame erroneous notion, the Brafilians abftain from the flesh of ducks, and of every creature that moves flowly. It is obferved of northern nations, that they do not open the mouth fufficiently for diftinct articulation; and the reafon given is, that the coldness of the air makes them keep the mouth as close as poffible. This reafon is indolently copied by writers one from another: people enured to a cold climate feel little cold in the mouth; befide that a caufe fo weak could never operate equally among fo many different nations. The real caufe is, that northern tongues abound with confonants, which admit but a fmall aperture of the mouth. (See Elements of Criticism, chap. Beauty of language.) A lift of German names to be found in every catalogue of books, will make this evident, Rutgerfius, for example, Faefch. To ac

count for a fact that is certain, any reafon commonly fuffices,

A talent for writing feems in Germany to be estimated by weight, as beauty is faid to be in Holland. Cocceius for writing three weighty folio volumes on law, has obtained among his countrymen the epithet of Great. This author, handling the rules of fucceffion in land-eftates, has with most profound erudition founded all of them upon the following very fimple propofition: In a competition, that defcendent is entitled to be preferred who has the greatest quantity of the predeceffor's blood in his veins, Quæritur, has a man any of his predeceffor's blood in his veins, otherwife than metaphorically? Simple indeed! to build an argument in law upon a pure metaphor.

Next of reafonings where the conclufion follows not from the premises, or fundamental propofition. Plato endeavours to prove, that the world is endowed with wifdom, by the following argument. "The world is greater than any of its parts; therefore it is endowed with wifdom; "for otherwife a man who is endowed with "wisdom would be greater than the world (a).” The conclufion here does not follow; for tho' man is endowed with wifdom, it follows not, that he is greater than the world in point of fize. Zeno endeavours to prove, that the world has the use of reason, by an argument of the fame kind. To convince the world of the truth of the four gofpels, Ireneus (b) urges the following arguments, which he calls demonftration. "There are four quarters of the world and four cardinal winds,

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confequently there are four gofpels in the church, "as there are four pillars that fupport it, and "four breaths of life that render it immor"tal." Again, "The four animals in Ezekiel's "vision mark the four ftates of the Son of God. "The lion is his royal dignity: the calf his priest"hood: the beaft with the face of man his hu“man nature: the eagle his fpirit which de"fcends on the church. To these four animals "correfpond the four gofpels, on which our Lord "is feated. John, who teaches his celeftial ori

gin, is the lion, his gofpel being full of confi"dence: Luke, who begins with the priesthood "of Zachariah, is the calf: Matthew, who def"cribes the genealogy of Chrift according to the "flesh, is the animal refembling a man: Mark, "who begins with the prophetic fpirit coming "from above, is the eagle. This gofpel is the "shortest of all, because brevity is the character

" of

(a) Cicero, De natura Deorum, lib. 2. § 12. (6) Lib. 3. cap. 11.

"of prophecy." Take a third demonftration of the truth of the four gofpels. "There have been "four covenants; the firft under Adam, the fe"cond under Noah, the third under Mofes, the "fourth under Jefus Chrift." Whence Ireneus concludes, that they are vain, rash, and ignorant, who admit more or less than four gofpels. St. Cyprian in his exhortation to martyrdom, after having applied the mysterious number feven, to the feven days of the creation, to the feven thoufand years of the world's duration, to the seven fpirits that stand before God, to the feven lamps of the tabernacle, to the feven candlesticks of the Apocalypfe, to the feven pillars of wisdom, to the feven children of the barren woman, to the feven women who took one man for their hufband, to the feven brothers of the Maccabees ; obferves, that St. Paul mentions that number as a privileged number; which, fays he, is the reason why he did not write but to feven churches. Pope Gregory, writing in favour of the four councils, viz. Nice, Conftantinople, Ephefus, and Calcedon, reafons thus: "That as there are

four evangelifts, there ought alfo to be four " councils." What would he have faid, if he had lived 100 years later, when there were many more than four? In adminiftering the facrament of the Lord's fupper, it was ordered, that the hoft fhould be covered with a clean linen cloth; because, says the Canon law, the body of our Lord Jefus was buried in a clean linen cloth. Jofephus, in his anfwer to Appion, urges the following argument for the temple of Jerufalem: As there is but one God, and one "world, it holds in analogy, that there fhould "be but one temple." At that rate, there fhould be but one worshipper. And why fhould that one temple be at Jerufalem rather than at

Rome,

Rome, or at Pekin? The Syrians and Greeks did not for a long time eat fish. Two reasons are assigned: one is, that fish is not facrificed to the gods; the other, that being immersed in the fea, they look not up to heaven (a). The first would afford a more plaufible argument for eating fish. And if the other have any weight, it would be an argument for facrificing men, and neither fish nor cattle. In juftification of the Salic law, which prohibits female fucceffion, it was long held a conclufive argument, That in the fcripture lilies are faid neither to work nor to fpin. Vieira, termed by his countrymen the Lufttanian Cicero, published fermons, one of which be gins thus," Were the fupreme being to fhow him

felf vifibly, he would chufe the circle rather than "the triangle, the fquare, the pentagon, the duo"decagon, or any other figure." But why appear in any of these figures? And if he were obliged to appear in fo mean a fhape, a globe is undoubtedly more beautiful than a circle. Peter Hantz of Horn, who lived in the last century, imagined that Noah's ark is the true conftruction of a fhip; " which," faid he, is the workmanship of God, and therefore perfect;" as if a veffel made merely for floating on the water, were the beft alfo for failing. Sixty or feventy years ago, the fashion prevailed, in imitation of birds, to fwallow fmall ftones for the fake of digeftion; as if what is proper for birds, were equally proper for men. The Spaniards, who laid waste a great part of the Weft-Indies, endeavoured to excufe their cruelties, by maintaining, that the natives were not men, but a fpecies of the Ouran Outang; for no better reason, than that they were of a copper colour, fpoke an unknown language, and had no beard. The Pope iffued a bull, declaring that it pleafed him and the Holy Ghoft to acknowledge the Americans to be of the human race,

(a) Sir John Marsham, p. 221,

This

This bull was not received cordially; for in the council of Lima, ann. 1583, it was violently difputed, whether the Americans had fo much underftanding as to be admitted to the facraments of the church. In the 1440, the Portuguefe folicited the Pope's permiffion to double the Cape of Good Hope, and to reduce to perpetual fervitude the negroes, because they had the colour of the damned, and never went to church. In the Frederician Code, a propofition is laid down, That by the law of nature no man can make a testament. And in support of that propofition the following argument is urged, which is faid to be a demonftration: "No deed can be a "teftament while a man is alive, because it is not "neceffarily his ultima voluntas; and no man can "make a teftament after his death." Both premifes are true, but the negative conclufion does not follow it is true a man's deed is not his ultima voluntas, while he is alive but does it not become his ultima voluntas, when he dies without altering the deed?

:

Many reasonings have paffed current in the world as good coin, where the premises are not true; nor, fuppofing them true, would they infer a conclufion. Plato in his Phaedon relies on the following argument for the immortality of the foul. "Is not death "the oppofite of life? Certainly. And do they not

give birth to each other? Certainly. What then

is produced from life? Death. And what from "death? Life. It is then from the dead that all "things living proceed; and confequently fouls ex"ift after death." God, fays Plato, made but five worlds, because according to his definition there are but five regular bodies in geometry. Is that a reafon for confining the Almighty to five worlds, not one lefs or more. Ariftotle, who wrote a book upon mechanics, was much puzzled about the equilibrium of a balance, when unequal weights are hung upon it at different diftances from the centre.