  This was not the only philosophical aspect in Burke's political practice. A major conceptual tool in discussing politics was relation. Relation is one of those terms which was common to both the scholastics and Locke. It denotes both comparison and connexion. Comparison was an invaluable procedure because it enabled events, institutions and persons to be placed in any number of lights which would raise or lower their significance and standing. Connexion was scarcely less valuable, because the place that someone or something occupied could be used to sustain or criticise their role, as well as to demonstrate the value of co-operative contraries. Best of all, relation in either sense lent itself to a myriad of uses, for as LeClerc had remarked in his Logic (which Burke had read at Trinity) relations were beyond counting—sunt autem innumerae relationes (Le Clerc 1692, pt. 1, ch. 4, s. 1, p. 19).