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Proceedings of the Pioyal Society 
books of the Organon, along with the Introduction of Porphyry, 
at the middle of the twelfth century there were two distinct sources 
of knowledge of Aristotle’s opinions on Logic—that derived from 
the “old” tradition from the hooks on the Categories, and on In¬ 
terpretation, and from the Introduction of Porphyry, and that 
derived from a “ new ” tradition from recovered translations made 
by Boethius of the Prior and Posterior Analytics, of the Topics and 
of the book on Fallacies, and from new translations. 
This new tradition was looked upon with considerable mistrust 
by several of the steady going old schoolmen. It disturbed their 
view of logic. They had constructed a very fair well-rounded system 
from the material supplied by the old tradition. It had been suffi¬ 
cient for them then, and they wanted nothing new now. Even 
supposing that these new treatises were Aristotle’s, they would not 
admit them to be logical, or, if they went so far, they would not 
allow them to have any real importance. The old doctrine had 
done very well for them and their fathers before them, and it might 
serve every one else. They saw no need for any change. On the other 
hand, more enterprising students were vastly taken with these new 
treatises, and found that they contained Aristotle’s real logic. They 
revealed to them the doctrine of the syllogism, and its application 
in demonstrative, probable, and fallacious material of knowledge. 
The new tradition was Logic, the old not more than an introduction, 
even if worthy of that place. 
When we consider that logic, with all its verbal niceties, was 
more studied than anything else in these days, we find in the very 
fact of these two different traditions, and the two ways of accepting 
them, all the elements for a severe and widely extended quarrel: 
and the quarrel soon arose. On the one side, the zeal shown in 
studying and commenting upon these new treatises was wholly 
attributed to the love of novelty, and the new opinions concerning 
logic and its sphere, which were coming into fashion, were set down 
as due to a restless, shallow, modern spirit. The logic of the new 
tradition was called the u Nova Logicaf and those who advocated 
it, “ ModerniP On the other hand, the Moderni thought that 
their opponents were prejudiced against their opinions, simply 
because they were not the old ones, and they despised them as old 
world thinkers, who had not the breadth of view required to accept 
