CHAPTER I. 



OF THE NECESSITY OF COMMENCING WITH AN 

 ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE. 



1. IT is so much the established practice of writers on 

 logic to commence their treatises by a few general observations 

 (in most cases, it is true, rather meagre) on Terms and their 

 varieties, that it will, perhaps, scarcely be required from me 

 in merely following the common usage, to be as particular in 

 assigning my reasons, as it is usually expected that those 

 should be who deviate from it. 



The practice, indeed, is recommended by considerations 

 far too obvious to require a formal justification. Logic is a 

 portion of the Art of Thinking: Language is evidently, and 

 by the admission of all philosophers, one of the principal in- 

 struments or helps of thought ; and any imperfection in the 

 instrument, or in the mode of employing it, is confessedly 

 liable, still more than in almost any other art, to confuse and 

 impede the process, and destroy all ground of confidence in the 

 result. For a mind not previously versed in the meaning and 

 right use of the various kinds of words, to attempt the study 

 of methods of philosophizing, would be as if some one should 

 attempt to become an astronomical observer, having never 

 learned to adjust the focal distance of his optical instruments 

 so as to see distinctly. 



Since Reasoning, or Inference, the principal subject of 

 logic, is an operation which usually takes place by means of 

 words, and in complicated cases can take place in no other 

 way ; those who have not a thorough insight into the significa- 

 tion and purposes of words, will be under chances, amounting 

 almost to certainty, of reasoning or inferring incorrectly. And 

 logicians have generally felt that unless, in the very first stage, 

 they removed this source of error; unless they taught their 

 VOL. i. 2 



