LITERARY NOTICES. 



631 



may be agitated to the utmost depths 

 and carried away in enthusiasm aver 

 the workings of our collegiate system. 

 At the hite competitive examination, 

 held at Saratoga, to decide upon the 

 relative attainment in a new branch of 

 scholarship, nine of the leading colleges 

 of the country entered the lists, and the 

 concourse of people that gathered to 

 witness the exercises and note the re- 

 sult was something altogether unprece- 

 dented among educational exhibitions 

 on this side of the Atlantic. It can no 

 longer be said that learning and its dev- 

 otees are unappreciated by our people. 

 They came from all parts of the coun- 

 try through the sweltering heat, were 

 thickly stowed away in suffocating bed- 

 rooms, relished the stale mutton and 

 wilted cucumbers furnished by the land- 

 lords, and trailed day after day through 

 miles of grime and smudge to reach the 

 place of inter-collegiate trial, and went 

 wild with tumultuous excitement when 

 one group of students exhibited greater 

 proficiency than the rest. It was a 

 great event for the higher education of 

 this land, and will no doubt result in 

 many new accessions to the college 

 classes, and in raising still higher the 

 standard of attainment in the new di- 

 rection of study. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Logic, Inductive and Deductive. By 

 Alexander Bain, LL, D., Professor 

 of Logic in the University of Aber- 

 deen. New and Revised Edition. 731 

 pages. Price, 82.00. D. Appleton & Co. 



From Aristotle, the father of the science, 

 to the present day, logic has been one of 

 the leading elements of a liberal education. 

 During the middle ages it was understood 

 and practised as the art of reasoning; with 

 the rise of modern science, it has been sys- 

 tematically extended so as to embrace the 

 laws or principles to which the mind con- 

 forms in the search for truth. Dependent 

 upon the larger science of mental philos- 

 ophy or psychology, it has been constantly 

 affected by the progress that has taken 



place in the knowledge of mind. The most 

 influential modern work upon this subject 

 is that of Mr. Mill, who was incited to un- 

 dertake it by the perusal of Dr. Whewell's 

 " History of the Inductive Sciences." His 

 Logic was undoubtedly Mill's great work, 

 and will occupy a prominent place in the 

 history of the development of the science ; 

 but it aimed to be a constructive and 

 epoch-making treatise, and was designed 

 for the use of scholars rather than for 

 general students. 



Mr. Bain was the life-long and intimate 

 friend of Mr. Mill, and was intrusted by the 

 latter with the supervision of the proofs of 

 the first edition of his work on logic for the 

 press. He is, besides, one of the leading 

 psychologists of the age, and author of a 

 system of mental philosophy, which stands 

 high as an original contribution to the ad- 

 vancement of the subject. He has been 

 Professor of Logic in the University of 

 Aberdeen for many years, and was thor- 

 oughly qualified to prepare a valuable book 

 upon the subject. But, whereas Mill ad- 

 dressed himself to philosophers, and occu- 

 pied himself with abstruse and original 

 inquiries, Mr. Bain has taken for his task to 

 treat the subject in a more popular manner, 

 adapted to all classes of students. His 

 volume may be regarded as, in fact, a 

 popular treatise from the most modern 

 point of view ; and so well has he suc- 

 ceeded with this feature of the work, that 

 persons entirely unfamiliar with the sub- 

 ject may read it with interest and profit. 



And yet nothing would be more un- 

 just to Prof. Bain than the idea that his 

 work is in any sense a compilation. It is, 

 on the contrary, a treatise of marked origi- 

 nality, and has been developed entirely 

 from the author's point of view as an inde- 

 pendent student. One of the most instruc- 

 tive and interesting parts of the volume is 

 book fifth, treating of the " Logic of the Sci- 

 ences," or, what may be called, logic in its 

 concrete and practical applications. " The 

 Logic of Mathematics," "The Logic of 

 Physics," of Chemistry, of Biology, of Psy- 

 chology, of Politics, of Medicine, and what 

 the author calls " The Logic of Practice," 

 are considered in separate chapters, and, in 

 connection with the " Classification of the 

 Sciences," they form a most valuable state- 



