DEFINITION AND PROVINCE OF LOGIC. 



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ings of Sir William Hamilton <and of his numerous pupils. Logic, as this school conceives it, 

 is "the Science of the Formal Laws of Thought;" a definition framed for the express pur- 

 pose of excluding, as irrelevant to Logic, whatever relates to Belief and Dishelief, or to the 

 pursuit of truth as such, and restricting the science to that very limited portion of its total 

 province, wiiich has reference to the conditions, not of Truth, but of Consistency. Wiiat I 

 have thouglit it useful to say in opposition to this limitation of the field of Logic, has been 

 said at some length in a separate work, first publislied in 18G5, and entitled "An Examina- 

 tion of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, and of the Principal Philosophical Questions dis- 

 cussed in his Writings." For the purposes of the present Treatise, I am content that the jus- 

 tification of the larger extension which I give to the domain of the science, should rest on the 

 sequel of the Treatise itself. Some remarks on the relation which the Logic of Consistency 

 bears to the Logic of Truth, and on the place which that particular part occupies in the whole 

 to which it belongs, will be found in the present volume (Book II., chap, iii., § 9). 



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