SOME LOGICAL IMPOSSIBILITIES 221 



gism, is undeniably and incontestably valid. In five lines, 

 in one-and-twenty words, it performs seven impossibilities. 



Any one who is unacquainted with logicians and their ways 

 would suppose that when their doctrines had been shown to 

 be prima facie false, logicians would find some answer to the 

 charge, or would modify their doctrines ; but any one who 

 would make such a supposition knows little of Logic or of 

 logicians. In A New Logic I have surveyed the whole field 

 of Logic, have examined every one of its doctrines, and have 

 shown that every one of them prima facie requires justification 

 as much as the doctrine of the syllogism. These demonstra- 

 tions have been before logicians for three years. The book has 

 been sent for review to a professor of Logic in nearly every 

 university in the kingdom, and one and all have declined to take 

 any notice of it. One or two minor logical luminaries have 

 denied in general terms my accusations, but no one has 

 examined my instances or tried to refute them. The only 

 logician who has examined my charges in detail is Miss E. E. C. 

 Jones, the Principal of Girton, and she admits that some of them, 

 at any rate, are incontrovertible. It remains on record that for 

 three years the whole fabric of traditional Logic has been 

 accused, in general and in detail, of error and inadequacy, 

 and that for three years the charges have remained un- 

 answered. It is nearly time that judgment should go by 

 default. 



I do not deny that, if the presumptions of Logic were true, 

 something might be said for its rules and its impossibilities. II 

 it were true that we can speak, think, reason, and argue of no 

 "quantities" but All, Some, and None; if it were true that no 

 proposition can form the basis of argument or statement, or can 

 even be constructed, without the use of "is" or "are" as its 

 principal verb ; if it were true that the only mode of reasoning 

 is to include the thing reasoned about in a class, or to exclude 

 it from a class, then some of the doctrines of Logic would be 

 true, although even then some of them would not be true. But 

 I deny the validity of these presumptions, and I appeal to the 

 universal experience of mankind to say whether we cannot, and 

 do not frequently speak, think, reason, and argue of Few, Many, 

 Most, This, That, Certain, The First, The Next, The Last, More, 

 Fewer, All Together, Enough, Others, The Rest, and many other 

 quantities ; whether we do not constantly form, use, reason, and 



