24 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



multiplication table, or a Paderewski the five-finger exercises, 

 to a little child. They all explain it to me as if I had never 

 heard it before, and are quite ignorant, or oblivious, or indifferent 

 to the fact that I have long ago examined it, refuted it, rejected it, 

 and denounced it. Bless you, Miss Stebbing, I know the 

 logician and all his erroneous doctrines. I have read his works, 

 and I do not agree with them. If I may trouble you to refer to 

 my New Logic, which you are going to tear to pieces at some 

 future date, you will find in it hundreds of arguments that 

 contain no universal, and yet reach valid conclusions ; and apart 

 from my own discoveries there is the argument a fortiori, in 

 which many a logician has searched for the universal, and no 

 logician has found it. I will not go over the ground again, for 

 I am as tired of the universal as any superannuated governess 

 of the five-finger exercises. I could go on from now till this 

 time next year giving you examples of reasoning without 

 universals, reasoning that does not consist in the application of 

 general rules to particular cases, but I will only trouble you 

 with one, and I will give you from now till next year to find the 

 universal in it— I say find the universal, I do not say invent a 

 universal and pretend that you have found it in the argument, 

 where it does not exist : 



If There are more little pigs than there are teats, 

 then One little pig must go without. 



" Continuous development in the light of criticism," says Miss 

 Stebbing, " is the sign of a progressive science." How true ! how 

 noble! and how totally inapplicable to logic! But what, I 

 would ask Miss Stebbing, is utter stagnation and wooden im- 

 penetrability to criticism a sign of? I fully agree with her ; and 

 how pleasant it is to be able to agree ! — I fully agree with her in 

 her appreciation of Mr. Alfred Sidgwick's criticisms of logic, 

 but do any of the five books that I quoted at the beginning of 

 this paper, or does any other orthodox book on logic, show one 

 hair's breadth of modification in consequence of these criticisms ? 

 Not one. Miss Stebbing is of opinion that if I had confined 

 myself to such criticism as Mr. Alfred Sidgwick's I should have 

 done something to aid in the development of logic. I doubt it. 

 Where Mr. Sidgwick himself has been unsuccessful it is very 

 unlikely that I should have succeeded ; and besides, I do not 

 want to aid in the development of logic. I want to sweep the 



