AND ON LOGIC IN GENERAL. 



181 



inference as the simple relation, it does not follow that the logician's form is the form of thought 

 we actually employ in inference. It is one thing to say, I can shew you by such and such 

 reductions how to demonstrate the only inference these premises will give ; and quite another 

 thing to add, Therefore this is the way you infer. 



IV. Logic is both science and art : and the art, the logica utens, ought to be a prepara- 

 tion for sure and rapid material application. The proposition of the world at large is highly 

 complex: it is loaded with what I shall call charges. It has complex terms, conjunctive and 

 disjunctive; it introduces allusions, for reinforcement, for explanation, for justification of its 

 appearance, for colouring and effect. It gives reasons, takes syllogisms into the description of 

 terms, and implies assertions in giving reasons, leaving the assertions to be supplied from their 

 reasons. It is a tapestry, of which the logical form is only the original web. It undergoes 

 conversions in which idiom demands synonymes : but the logica docens keeps clear of the 

 whole theory of complex terms by throwing the proposition into disjunctive or dilemmatic 

 forms which the actual form of thought does not recognise. Is the student of logic, gene- 

 rally speaking, prepared rapidly to analyse the two following propositions, and to say whether 

 or no they must be identical, if the identity of synonymes be granted .'' 



The suspicion of a nation is easily ex- When we see a nation either backward to 



cited, as well against its more civilised as suspect its neighbour, or apt to be satisfied by 

 against its more warlike neighbours ; and such explanations, we may rely upon it that the 

 suspicion is with difficulty removed. neighbour is neither the more civilised nor 



the more warlike of the two. 



This, under the symbols I have used and shall use, is the conversion of the form A, B))CD 

 into c, d))ab. The world would have treated logic with more respect, if it had led up to such 

 conversions as the above. But it lands us and leaves us, as to conversion, in ' Some tyrant is 

 cruel' turned into 'Some cruel is tyrant,' or the like: a needful commencement, but a lame 

 and impotent conclusion. 



I will now take a syllogism, one syllogism, well charged* certainly, but only with charges 



• Of all the writers on logic whom I have examined, John 

 JUilton is the one who delights in extracting the syllogism from 

 its loading : his instances are almost entirely from the Latin 

 poets, which he probably needed no sight to recall. Milton's 

 logic was published two years before his death. 'Joannis 

 Miltoni, Angli, Artis Logicae plenior institutio, ad Petri Rami 

 methodum concinnata' (London, Impensis Spencer Hickman, 

 Societatis Regalis Typographi, lfi72, 12mo, portrait). The logic 

 of Ramus was adopted by the University of Cambridge, pro- 

 bably in the sixteenth century. George Downame, or Downam, 

 who died Bishop of Deny in 1634, was praslector of logic at 

 Cambridge in 1590. His ' Commentarii in P. Rami . . . Dialec- 

 ticam . . . .' (Frankfort, 1616, 8vo, ) is an excellent work. The 

 Cambridge book then most in use was the Dialectica of John 

 Seton, first published (Ames) in 1563, and repeated down to 

 1611 at least: it is noticed by Ur Peacock as the book to some 

 editions of which (from 1570 onwards, if not before, I find) 

 Buckley's arithmetical verses are appended. It is not a Ramist 

 book: the presumption is that Downam was the Cambridge 

 apostle of his doctrine. Ramism fixed a mark upon Cam- 



bridge which it has never lost to this day; that is, if the acts 

 in divinity, &c. be still kept in the old form. The distri- 

 bution of the syllogism into three conditionals, ' Si A sit B, 

 cadit quasstio; sed A est B, ergo cadit quaestio, &c.' is pure 

 Ramism, both as to form and phrase. Never having paid any 

 attention to Ramist logic, I never could understand this form. 

 No one could inform me : even a question sent to the Notes 

 and Queries produced no reply except an ingenious conjecture 

 that the casus quicsiionis explains Shakspeare'a meaning of the 

 obscure words "loss of question" in Measure for Measure, 

 act ii. scene 4 : a phrase on which commentators were so far to 

 seek that Johnson proposed "toss of question." And so it 

 stood until I happened to propose the difficulty to Prof. Spald- 

 ing of St Andrews, who replied that an explanation might be 

 presumed if we knew, or could assume, that this form was intro- 

 duced by Ramists. Though cognisant of Cambridge Ramism, 

 I had never had the sense to put the two things together. 



I greatly regret the abolition of the act for the B.A. degree. 

 It was the most useful of the exercises, and the most trying. 



