in philosophy, denotes any doctrines deduced from self-evident principles.

Sciences may be properly divided as follows, 1. The knowledge of things, their constitutions, properties, and operations: this, in a little more enlarged sense of the word, may be called σύνεσις, or natural philosophy; the end of which is speculative truth. See Philosophy and Physics.—2. The skill of rightly applying these powers, πράξις: The most considerable under this head is ethics, which is the seeking out those rules and measures of human actions that lead to happiness, and the means to practise them (see Moral Philosophy); and the next is mechanics, or the application of the powers of natural agents to the uses of life (see Mechanics).—3. The doctrine of signs, σημειαστική; the most useful of which being words, it is aptly enough termed logic. See Logic.

This, says Mr Locke, seems to be the most general, as well as natural, division of the objects of our understanding. For a man can employ his thoughts about nothing but either the contemplation of things themselves for the discovery of truth; or about the things in his own power, which are his actions, for the attainment of his own ends; or the signs the mind makes use of both in the one and the other, and the right ordering of them for its clearer information. All which three, viz., things as they are in themselves knowable, actions as they depend on us in order to happiness, and the right use of signs in order to knowledge, being toto celo different, they seem to be the three great provinces of the intellectual world, wholly separate and distinct one from another.