780 



^SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No. 231. 



fill entirely the uses of an ordinary introduction, 

 the traditional staple of logic. These simple 

 analyses and operations, as a matter of fact, 

 besides retaining still a certain real point and 

 meaning, would deserve some special consider- 

 ation if only from the circumstance that, the 

 new branch of induction aside, they are sub- 

 stantially what, in the popular notion and 

 even In the common run of handbooks, will be 

 always confronting the student as logic, sole and 

 simple. Professor Creighton commendably 

 would recognize these facts more completely 

 than Dr, Bosanquet has cared to do. 



The first two chapters of his book Professor 

 Creighton devotes to an Introduction. The 

 definition of logic, with which he sets out, suf- 

 fice it to say, is thoroughly modern in spirit. 

 So, too, his differentiation of the function and 

 materials of logic from those of psychology 

 is carried out in a modern, and, moreover, a 

 soundly practical way. In both these con- 

 nections it would, indeed, have been in- 

 structive to have been given some moderately 

 searching review of the effect of diflTerent con- 

 ceptions of the real nature of thought ; but this, 

 doubtless, was a topic felt to lie outside the 

 scope of the book. On the venerable theme 

 whether or not logic is an art as well as a 

 science, the author expresses himself thus : The 

 analyses of logic are capable of a practical ap- 

 plication, but not to the extent of constituting 

 an art. Thinking is too flexible to enable 

 us, on the basis of our theoretical knowl- 

 edge, to lay down, as we can in photography 

 or even in medicine, rules for its definite guid- 

 ance. It is possible to prescribe only the gen- 

 eral conditions that must be observed in reason- 

 ing correctly. — The question here of our agree- 

 ment or otherwise will largely be a verbal one 

 as to how an art is to be defined. Professor 

 Creighton himself speaks of the Aristotelian 

 logic, in the ordinary representation, as perhaps 

 more properly described as an art. Still, it may 

 be suspected whether Professor Creighton' s 

 general denial of a strict art-character to logic 

 does not hinder him, in his subsequent exposi- 

 tion of the old syllogistic logic (his exposition, 

 but not the admirable ' exercises ' he has ap- 

 pended at the close of the volume), from quite 

 giving due emphasis to those exercises in So- 



cratic ' dialectic ' and 'induction,' in interpre 

 tation, definition and the like, wherein, rather 

 than in the operation of mere abstract formulas 

 — A's and E's, S's and M's, Baroko's and Bo- 

 kardo's — lies the best discipline of ' formal ' 

 logic. But even more is it to be feared whether 

 the conventional presentation of the old logic, 

 which, as we shall see. Professor Creighton for 

 the most part follows — whether this presenta- 

 tion, either in fulness or in order and method, 

 can meet the requirements of science in the rig- 

 orous modern sense, and must not rather seek 

 its sole justification in a paramount simple ar- 

 tistic than a strictly scientific interest and char- 

 acter. 



The second chapter of the Introduction is 

 very appropriately a historical sketch. A cry- 

 ing need in the maze of contemporary logical 

 doctrine is a simple but accurate and all- 

 around elucidation for the student — if only for 

 the sake of enabling him to approach the litera- 

 ture intelligently— of the various connections and 

 distinctions of logical standpoints and so-called 

 departments ; and of all methods, moreover, 

 of effecting this end, the historical can hardly 

 be denied to be the easiest and most enlighten- 

 ing. Professor Creighton undertakes such a his- 

 torical explanation with reference to Deduc- 

 tion, Induction and the 'New' logic; and his 

 sketch is concise and bright — so far as it goes at 

 all. Thus his account of the origin, develop- 

 ment and respective functions historically of 

 the Ai-istotelian and the inductive logics is ani- 

 mated, to the point, and for the most part very 

 satisfactory. When, however, we come to that 

 logic out of whose point of view his own treat- 

 ment is to be determined, he merely says that 

 it has arisen under the influence of Hegel, but 

 how it has done so, and what Hegel's logic it- 

 self is like, or what are its antecedents back ta 

 Kant or, perchance, to Plato — all this is utterly 

 passed over. Assuredly this failure of the au- 

 thor's, after he has devoted ten pages to the 

 origins and evolution of a logic (the syllogistic) 

 which he does not accept, at least as final, to 

 provide some account of the historical begin- 

 nings and course of growth of that conception 

 which he does accept as adequate, is to be set 

 down as a defect not remedied even by the sys- 

 tematic exposition of this truer view which we 



