Junk 2, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



fSl 



get iu Part III. of our book. How very difficult 

 it is to put simplj', aud yet iu orderly truth, the 

 history of that fruitful notion of thought and 

 logic which Professor Creightou adopts, every- 

 one must appreciate who has endeavored to 

 teach it; but then, in the degree that this his- 

 tory is essential for our students, its difficulty, 

 as already remarked, is just a writer's best op- 

 portunity, and his best justification for adding 

 one more book to the many. 



A more thorough preliminary working out 

 of the development from the old to a new logic 

 would have been not only helf)ful to the stu- 

 dent, but of service to the author himself. For, 

 in his desire to accord to the old logic that due 

 recognition which consitutes one of his prime 

 objects, he feels obliged, apparently, in the 

 exposition of 'Syllogism,' which makes up 

 Part I. of our book, to reproduce in the main 

 also the old conventional, half-false order of 

 topics — Terms, Propositions, Immediate Infer- 

 ence, Syllogism, Fallacies — and the old narrow, 

 distorted theoretical descriptions, with a fuller 

 truth of relationships pointed out only inciden- 

 tally or forgotten altogether. In Chapter I. of 

 this same part, some general precautions are, 

 indeed, put forward ; but the author himself 

 does not live up to them ; how much less will 

 the thoughtless student ! As an extreme illus- 

 tration of failure of fidelity to the interests of 

 the higher standpoint and a reversion, for the 

 time-being, to olden easy-going, slipshod meth- 

 ods, may be cited the treatment of Terms. We 

 are abruptly informed (p. 46) — " wj'e aus der 

 Pistole'^ — that " the first divisions which we have 

 to notice is that into Singular or Individual, 

 General and Collective terms." These being 

 defined in the familiar way, we are given the 

 further divisions into abstract and concrete, 

 positive and negative, absolute and relative ; 

 which distinctions, it should be said, particu- 

 larly that of abstract and concrete, are handled 

 very well from the point of view of the old- 

 time 'art of logic' What, though, of 'new' 

 theory of thought is there iu this (p. 52) ? — 

 " Positive (terms) express the existence "*■ * *. 

 A Negative term indicates the absence * * *. 

 Words which are positive in form, are, however, 

 often negative in meaning * * *." Orwhatin 

 this (p. 55)? — "The nature of everything is 



largely [sic'] determined by the nature of the 

 things with which it stands iu relation *' * *. 

 It is, however, possible to make a distinctioit be- 

 tween words which are the names of things com- 

 paratively [sic] independent and * * *." It is 

 but in keeping to find this chapter ending with 

 the subjectof extension and intension of terms, i. 

 e. , with that which ought to form the beginning of 

 the treatment of such distinctions as individual 

 and general, collective and material, etc. Now, 

 to be sure, all this can be no result of a sheer 

 ignorance of the spirit and demands of modern 

 logic. Part III. sufficientlj' shows the contrary ; 

 and even in this same first Part we are given 

 a chapter such as that on hypothetical and 

 disjunctive arguments, one that is fertilized 

 throughout by organic reflections, and, in con- 

 sequence, is the freshest, most Interesting and 

 best of this entire section of the book. Or 

 perhaps it would be juster to say that Professor 

 Creightou knows quite generally how to be in- 

 teresting, as also to be neat and concise, and, 

 in most matters, pedagogically tactful. His 

 only difficulty isan unresolved conflictof ideals — 

 of the elementary practical interest of the old 

 logic, with the theoretic one of exhibiting the 

 doctrines of this logic under a wider scientific 

 point of view. In this conflict, now the one 

 end and now the other, is lost sight of; but 

 herewith, of course, the author's great purpose 

 of satisfying the requirements of both old and 

 new logic goes just so far by the board. 



The faults of Part I., however, are in sharp 

 contrast with the merits of Part II. The latter 

 is, bj'all odds, the best-done portion of the book. 

 Here, too, perhaps, there might still be room 

 for a completer working-out of systematic'impli- 

 cations and relations ; and there remains, after 

 all the author's great deductions, too orthodox 

 an assent to the ' Five Methods ' of Mill ; 

 nevertheless, Pi-ofessor Creightou here plants 

 himself, everything considered, on modern 

 ground, and in the attitude of live thought, 

 with the result of giving us one of the very 

 best introductory treatments of luduction that 

 we possess. Aside from the difficulty of corre- 

 lation that must arise for the student from his 

 not having previously been given a genuine 

 theory of thought deductively regarded, but 

 only the mechanics of scholastic syllogistic — -the 



