174 Mr DE morgan, ON THE SYLLOGISM, No. Ill, 



been one sided, deprived of much scientific truth, encumbered with much scientific falshood, 

 perverted and erroneous in form, and given, in some of its doctrines, to impeach the truth of 

 the laws of thought on which it is founded. In one extreme of opinion, logic, language, and 

 common sense are never at variance : in another, Aristotle exhibits the truth partially, not 

 always correctly, in complexity, and even in confusion. Between these opinions I am not 

 obliged to choose. I am satisfied, with the satisfaction of one long used to the distinction 

 between demonstrated and probable conclusion, that the old logic is, so far as it goes, accurate 

 in method and true in result ; that is, as to the quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus : 

 but without affirming that all that is called necessary is necessary, or that all that is called 

 natural is natural. I feel equally sure that it is only a beginning ; that it contains but a 

 small part of the whole which it arrogates to itself in its old aspirations and its modern defi- 

 nition ; and that the low estimation in which a large part of the educated world now holds 

 it is to be traced to consequences of this incompleteness. 



II. Logic inquires into the form of thought, as separable from and independent of the 

 matter thought on. To every proposal for a new introduction there is but one answer; — You 

 outstep the bounds of logic, you introduce material considerations. On this point the first 

 question is. What is the distinction of form and matter ? — the second. Who are best able to 

 judge of it .'' 



The form or law of thought — asserted diff^erences between these words being of no im- 

 portance here — is detected when we watch the machine in operation without attending to the 

 matter operated on. The form may again be separable into form of form and matter of form : 

 and even the matter into form of matter and matter of matter ; and so on. The modus ope- 

 randi first detected may be one case of a limited or unlimited number, from all of which can 

 be extracted one common and higher principle, by separation from details which are still 

 differences of form. 



Take a nut-cracker, two levers on a common hinge. Put a bit of wood between the 

 levers to represent filberd, walnut, beechnut, almond, or any other kind of nut. We have 

 here what a logician would call the form of nut-cracking : and, imitating his practice of in- 

 sisting that he has obtained pure form so soon as he has effected one separation, we may say 

 that we have got the pure form of nut-cracking. But when we come to consider the screw, 

 the hammer, the teeth, &c. we begin to apprehend that the pure form of nut-cracking is strong 

 pressure applied to opposite sides of the nut, no matter how ; and this even though we may 

 detect in all the instruments the principle, as we call it, of the hinged levers. 



The logician is not much accustomed to the working presence of his own great distinction : 

 the mathematician deals with it unceasingly, though with little apprehension of its existence, 

 in most cases. Though logic has been in waking life for at least fifteen hundred years, its 

 real definition has not been in recognised existence during the fifteenth part of that time : this 

 definition has indeed been obeyed in many points, it has been caught for a minute and let go 

 again, it has been seen through a glass darkly, — at any time from Aristotle inclusive : it is 

 only in very modern days that it has been seized, stript of its coverings, and firmly fixed in 

 its place. And the first imperfect introduction, and the perfect recognition, have been the 

 work of mathematicians. 



