146 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



by authors of text-books for illustration and training in syllogistic 

 reasoning serve little more than to show the machinery of the syllogism. 

 Others are either too hackneyed, transmitted as they have been from one 

 generation of writers to another, or are lifeless fragments and conse- 

 quently mean scarcely more than so many words. Then, again, cases 

 of faulty argument constitute too large a proportion of text-book exer- 

 cises. If selected with discretion, defective reasoning may be used to 

 bring out in the most emphatic manner certain mistakes commonly 

 made in thinking. If, however, examples of bad reasoning are too 

 patently wrong, or if they appeal simply to the instinct of curiosity 

 and afford an excess of amusement, they are likely to fail in elucidating 

 principles and establishing correct habits of thought. On the whole, 

 fresh arguments taken from living thought, which are also models of 

 accurate thinking, should be more extensively used. 



At this point in the teaching of logic comes the real test of the 

 instructor's skill. Instead of relying upon the text-book, he must 

 depend for illustration upon his own resources. And, as far as 

 possible, the illustrations should be presented in their full form, as 

 actual arguments, and not in the condensed and lifeless way that text- 

 books from lack of space are forced to do. Moreover, what is of even 

 more consequence, he must be able to stimulate students to find ma- 

 terial for themselves. There is no more direct and practical way than 

 this for the student to cultivate the critical habit of mind in reading 

 newspapers and periodical literature, as well as the literature of the 

 various subjects of his college course. Such material would consti- 

 tute what John Morley has somewhere called ' reasoning in real matter.' 

 " It would make such a manual as no other matter could, for opening 

 plain men's eyes to the logical pitfalls among which they go stumbling 

 and crashing when they think they are disputing like Socrates or 

 reasoning like Newton. They would see how a proposition or an ex- 

 pression that looks straightforward and unmistakable is yet, on examin- 

 ation, found to be capable of having several distinct interpretations 

 and meaning several distinct things." 



Of course there is danger of using exercises that for one reason or 

 another are beyond the grasp of the sophomore or even the average 

 senior. And yet, I am inclined to think that whatever pedagogical 

 mistakes have been made in this connection have for the most part 

 been in the direction of making the illustrations and problems so 

 commonplace and simple as to seem silly. Indeed there is much to 

 justify the student in real life in making the criticism of the student 

 in the story, who says : " When they spring those tricks on you about 

 the flying arrow not moving, and all the rest, and prove it by pure 

 loo-ic, you learn what pure logic amounts to when it cuts loose from 

 common sense." 



