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THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



present day. Still most of tho essential elements of pure Logic 

 are to be found contained in his work called the " Organon." 



Those who bestowed any attention upon the study in the 

 period immediately after that of Aristotle need not be noticed. 

 The Stoics, indeed, are said to have invented the name of Logic, 

 and also the threefold division of philosophy into logic, physics, 

 and ethics. Nor is it necessary to dwell upon the writings of 

 Alexander of Aphrodisias and the other Greek commentators 

 (on the works of Aristotle) who flourished from the second and 

 third centuries of the Christian era down to tho end of tho 

 sixth. One of them, Porphyry, was the author of the fivefold 

 classification of the predicables into genus, species, difference, 

 property, and accident, already mentioned. 



Boethius, who lived in the sixth century, is the only Latin 

 commentator upon Aristotle deserving of the name ; and his 

 works form the connecting link between the Greek writers upon 

 Logic and the Schoolmen of later times. 



The famous scholastic philosophy, including the periods of its 

 infancy, progress, and decline, extended from the eleventh to 

 the close of the sixteenth century. No doubt, in Logic, as in 

 the other arts and sciences of which they pursued the study, 

 the Schoolmen were too fond of over-subtle and refined inquiries ; 

 and upon this account they have been frequently treated with a 

 contempt little merited by the ability or research which they 

 devoted to almost every branch of learning with which the 

 world was then acquainted ; and with which they started sub- 

 jects which the discoveries of later days have often enabled 

 their successors successfully to investigate and follow up. 

 Perhaps their chief service to the study of Logic was in fixing 

 what may be called its terminology. They determined with a 

 greater precision than had previously been exhibited the tech- 

 nical terms of the science, although they often carried to an 

 extreme and wearisome degree of minuteness their distinctions 

 between the various uses and significations of words in general. 

 They also exhibited in many respects a truer and more exact 

 conception of the nature and office of Logic than Aristotle had 

 done ; and it was with them that the famous controversy 

 (already mentioned) between the Nominalists and Realists was 

 begun and mainly carried on. 



From tho time of the Schoolmen down to that of Kant, many 

 names of more or less note occur ; amongst which may be men- 

 tioned Bacon, Hobbes, Gassendi, Descartes, Locke, Leibnitz, 

 and Wolf. The famous German philosopher, Kant, has, how- 

 ever, done far more for the science of Logic than any other 

 writer since tho days of Aristotle. He defined it, in his cele- 

 brated work called the " Critique of the Pure Reason," as " the 

 science of the necessary laws of thought," a conception of its 

 field upon which we shall make one or two remarks afterwards ; 

 and by clearly pointing out what was and what was not to be 

 regarded as coming within its province, he rendered the work 

 of subsequent writers more definite and easy. 



Logic has usually been popularly treated in the manner in 

 which it has been by Aldrich and Archbishop Whately, as con- 

 versant with reasoning alone, to the exclusion of the other 

 operations of the mind ; but the more correct and scientific 

 notion of it would make it embrace the analysis and considera- 

 tion of the laws of thought in general, and not merely of the 

 laws of reasoning in particular. This is the view of Sir W. 

 Hamilton and Mr. Mansel ; and it is one which of course makes 

 no practical difference in the rules such as have been already 

 given with reference to syllogistic reasoning, but merely exhibits, 

 as well as these, laws which are applicable to all thought, no 

 matter on what employed, and which no sound thinker is at 

 liberty to transgress, just as no sound reasoner can transgress 

 the laws stated as applicable to the syllogism. 



It will, then, be well, without entering into a deep metaphysical 

 discussion, for which there is not space, to examine what are 

 the different processes of thought to which the science of Logic 

 is, according to these writers, to be applied. These are laid 

 down as three conception, judgment, and reasoning, of which 

 the two latter processes have been already explained, and the 

 first corresponds to simple apprehension. 



I'li might, no doubt, seem at first sight as if any laws with 

 reference to our conceptions must be useless ; as if our appre- 

 hension obeyed no laws. This is only partly true, even accord- 

 ing to popular notions ; but, viewing thought and its processes 

 as they a.re viewed by Logic, it is quite erroneous. 



In the product resulting in our mind from any act of thought, 



we must always distinguish between what is called the matter 

 and what is called the form. The former is all that is given to 

 the mind, from whatever source obtained, previous to the act of 

 thought, and to enable it to perform it ; while the latter is the 

 shape given to these materials by the mind itself in the act of 

 thought which it performs. Thus in conception the mind is 

 given certain attributes, which it combines by the act of thought 

 into a whole resembling and representing an object of in- 

 tuition (i.e., to explain it popularly, some object which we have 

 learnt by means of sensation, perception, or imagination), to 

 which a name is subsequently given : e.g., my concept (as it is 

 called) of " man" is made up by the act of conception of the 

 given attributes of reason, life, etc. 



By the act of judging, similarly, the concepts which are 

 given are thought as being related in some manner (e.g., as 

 agreeing or disagreeing with) to an object of thought. Thus, 

 when given the two concepts " man" and " mortal," the mind, 

 by the act of judging, combines them into the judgment, " man 

 is mortal." 



So also in reasoning, judgments are what are given to bo 

 combined by the act of the mind and thought as necessitating 

 another judgment following from them as their consequence. 

 Of this, after what has been previously said in treating of the 

 syllogism, an example is unnecessary. 



We thus have, in each of the three operations of thought, to 

 distinguish carefully between the matter attributes, concepts, 

 judgments and the form conveyed in and by the act of the 

 mind. 



The .process of thinking, too, may in each case be either 

 formal or material. It is formal when no further materials are 

 necessary for completing the act of thought than those originally 

 given ; it is material when the contrary is the case, and tho 

 mind is obliged to have recourse to some other source besides 

 itself and what it can supply unaided, before it can complete 

 the process. Suppose, for instance, that when I am given two 

 attributes A and B I am able to think them as co-existing 

 together in an object, without having first to appeal to experi- 

 ence to learn whether any object is actually in existence which 

 possesses them both, I have performed an act of formal con- 

 ception. But if I have to wait for the evidence of experience, 

 my act of conception becomes material. So also it is with 

 judging and reasoning. Whenever the judgment or conclusion 

 can be formed by the mind with the data originally given, and 

 without the necessity of having recourse to the aid of experi- 

 ence, tho process is formal ; if otherwise, material. 



Those, then, who regard Logic as the science of the laws of 

 formal thinking, regard its province (considering it as a pure 

 theoretical science, and not as applicable to other sciences) in 

 each of these cases as being concerned only with what is formal, 

 and as giving rules by which it can be accurately determined 

 whether any of the laws of thought (which we cannot here 

 discuss) have been in the process transgressed or not. That 

 which is material, whether in the process or product of think- 

 ing, is in this view entirely outside its province ; and this 

 notion of Logic seems to be coming more and more widely 

 current every day. 



We cannot better conclude these papers upon Logic than by 

 quoting some remarks of Archbishop Thomson, in his " Laws 

 of Thought : " " The attempt to apply the rules of Logic will 

 both raise and lower the opinion which obtains concerning the 

 worth of the science. Those who condemn it altogether, as 

 arbitrary and artificial, as a set of rules for arguing, put together 

 in an age when truth was less the object of desire than argu- 

 ment, may find to their surprise that it is only a searching and 

 systematic account of processes which they daily perform, 

 whether in thought or in argument, in the pursuit of a science 

 or in the transactions of the street and market. Those, on the 

 other hand, who expect that Logic will be to them a golden 

 key to unlock the treasure-house of the knowledge of the 

 universe, will find that it neither gives them, nor pretends to 

 give, any new power; that it only refines and strengthens 

 powers they already possess ; that out of a dunce it never yet 

 made a philosopher. Whilst its rules apply to every science, 

 and it may therefore lay some claim to its ancient title the Art 

 of Arts, the Instrument of Instruments it only assists us in 

 the study of the sciences, not stands in their stead. We must 

 fight our own way over every inch of ground in the field ; but 

 Logic will often prevent our throwing away our blows 



