IV. 



THE NEW LOGICS. 



I. 



Russell's Logic. 



In order to justify its pretensions, logic has had to 

 transform itself. We have seen new logics spring 

 up, and the most interesting of these is Mr. Bertrand 

 Russell's. It seems as if there could be nothing new 

 written about formal logic, and as if Aristotle had gone 

 to the very bottom of the subject. But the field 

 that Mr. Russell assigns to logic is infinitely more 

 extensive than that of the classical logic, and he 

 has succeeded in expressing views on this subject that 

 are original and sometimes true. 



To begin with, while Aristotle's logic was, above all, 

 the logic of classes, and took as its starting-point 

 the relation of subject and predicate, Mr. Russell 

 subordinates the logic of classes to that of propositions. 

 The classical syllogism, " Socrates is a man," etc., 

 gives place to the hypothetical syllogism, "If A 

 is true, B is true ; now if B is true, C is true, etc." 

 This is, in my opinion, one of the happiest of ideas, 

 for the classical syllogism is easily reduced to the 

 hypothetical syllogism, while the inverse transforma- 

 tion cannot be made without considerable difficulty. 



