AND ON LOGIC IN GENERAL. 



223 



I need hardly say that I allude to the late William Hamilton — a name which I hold 

 entitled to the honour of losing its conventional accompaniments. And first, I take this oppor- 

 tunity of acknowledging the essential benefit which he conferred on my speculations. A mathe- 

 matician might have written long enough upon logic before he would have attracted the atten- 

 tion of the readers of Aristotle. John Bernoulli and James Bernoulli (as I discovered by 

 accident five years ago) both wrote on the subject, and so did Lambert : and all three on the 

 proposition. But I doubt if Hamilton himself — the most omnivorous of readers — ever knew 

 of the Bernoullis as writers on logic : and it is clear that he had no particular knowledge of 

 Lambert before 1850 or thereabouts. Accordingly, my views might easily have remained the 

 sole possession of the few mathematicians who study thought as thought. But when the most 

 eminent teacher of logic of the century not only put himself in opposition to me at the outset, 

 but affirmed his conviction that important parts of my views were derived from his own private 

 communication to me, he gave me such an introduction* to his fellow-students as I should 

 not have had the wit to contrive for myself, though the ordering of events had been unre- 

 servedly placed in my own hands. And what is the consequence .'' The writer of a manual 

 omits to mention my name or to allude to my views — only, as afterwards slated, to avoid con- 

 troversial description — and he is put upon the dilemma of culpable suppression or almost 

 incredible ignorance in the very first journal which notices his book. And for this I have 

 entirely to thank my opponent, who was well entitled to say of me, 

 Iste tulit pretium jam nunc certaminis hujus, 

 Quo cum victus erit, mecum certasse feretur. 



It is due to the Society as well as to myself that some notice should be taken of the Dis- 

 cussions on Philosophy (first edition, from page 621* following 620 to page 652* preceding 

 621, second edition, pp. 676 — 707). There I find accusations of (unconscious) plagiarism, 

 ignorance of elementary logic, and misrepresentation, coupled with reflections on the Society, 

 extended even to the University, for the admission of such matter into their Transactions. 

 I can aflbrd to supply the word unconscious. First, because the charge is not made in 

 terms which necessarily impute knowledge, while the retraction of a previous accusation, so 

 far as wilful taking was concerned, leaves me at liberty to think that the second accusation was 

 of the minor offence. Secondly, because I never knew of any journal, nor of more than one 

 individual, who held that I had, even unconsciously, derived anything from the communi- 

 cations made to me, which have now been ten years before the world. I shall, in the 

 briefest manner, take all necessary notice of the three things mentioned. 



Unconscious Plagiarism. Lambert unquestionably gave the definite quantification of the 

 middle term. I never saw his New Organon till long after my first paper was published. 

 When I saw it, I did not look at the part-f- which treats of this quantification: of which I 



" To the discussion which followed it is due that Mr Boole 

 turned his thoughts again to his old notes, and put his system 

 into a form for publication. I need hardly say that this system 

 i3 the true exhibition of the onymatic form of thought in the 

 language of algebra. 



t It is in the part of the book which treats of probabilities, 

 in a different volume from the syllogism ; and I dare say some 



will have found it difficult to believe that I, of all persons, 

 should neglect that part of the Neues Organon. But I had both 

 a subjective and an objective reason for abstaining. My ac- 

 quaintance with German is just enough to spell out mathe- 

 matics, in which a person used to the subject reads in almost 

 any European language. Again, the copy I used was bor- 

 rowed, and was bound with marbled edges by an owner who 



