298 LOGIC 



assigned, and that we must therefore resign the hope of attaining 

 by any empirical consideration of the received doctrine a precise 

 determination of the nature and limits of logical theory." I do not, 

 however, take quite so despondent a view of the logical chaos as 

 the late Professor Adamson; rather, I believe with Professor Stratton 

 (Psy. Rev. vol. in) that something is to be gained for unity and 

 consistency by more exact delimitation of the subject-matter of 

 the philosophical disciplines and their interrelations, which pre- 

 cision, if- secured, would assist in bringing into clear relief the real 

 problems of the several departments of inquiry, and facilitate the 

 proper classification of the disciplines themselves. 



The attempt to delimit the spheres of the disciplines, to state their 

 interrelations and classify them, was made early in the history of 

 philosophy, at the very beginning of the development of logic as 

 a science by Aristotle. In Plato's philosophy, logic is not separated 

 from epistemology and metaphysics. The key to his metaphysics is 

 given essentially in his theory of the reality of the concept, which 

 offers an interesting analogy to the position of logic in modern 

 idealism. Before Plato there was no formulation of logical theory, 

 and in his dialogues it is only contained in solution. The nearest 

 approach to any formulation is to be found in an applied logic set 

 forth in the precepts and rules of the rhetoricians and sophists. 

 Properly speaking, Aristotle made the first attempt to define the 

 subject of logic and to determine its relations to the other sciences. 

 In a certain sense logic for Aristotle is not a science at all. For 

 science is concerned with some ens, some branch of reality, while 

 logic is concerned with the methodology of knowing, with the 

 formal processes of thought whereby an ens or a reality is ascertained 

 and appropriated to knowledge. In the sense of a method whereby 

 all scientific knowledge is secured, logic is a propadeutic to the 

 sciences. In the idealism of the Eleatics and Plato, thought and being 

 are ultimately identical, and the laws of thought are the laws of 

 being. In Aristotle's conception, while the processes of thought 

 furnish a knowledge of reality or being, their formal operation con- 

 stitutes the technique of investigation, and their systematic explana- 

 tion and description constitute logic. Logic and metaphysics are dis- 

 tinguished as the science of being and the doctrine of the thought- 

 processes whereby being is known. Logic is the doctrine of the 

 organon of science, and when applied is the organon of science. The 

 logic of Aristotle is not a purely formal logic. He is not interested in 

 the merely schematic character of the thought-processes, but in 

 their function as mediators of apodictic truth. He begins with the 

 assumption that in the conjunction and disjunction of correctly 

 formed judgments the conjunction or disjunction of reality is mir- 

 rored. Aristotle does not here examine into the powers of the mind 



