Q6 
4 
OUR OBLIGATIONS TO GREEK THOUGHT. 2a 
Analytica Priora, i. xxvii., that he saw the possibility, though he 
denied the utility, as a logical form, of the Quantification of the 
Predicate. 
The obligation we lie under to the men, (in this case to the man) 
who first drew out from the tangled web of common discourse the 
strictly scientific laws of thought, is really very great. Those who 
will reflect upon the intricate and subtle mental processes involved 
in even a common piece of reasoning, and the great difficulty of 
holding each step of the subtle process in isolation enough to define 
its formal relation to every other, will see what marvellous dis- 
crimination, analytic skill, and power of synthetic arrangement, 
together with exhausting toil, were involved in the creation out of 
the tangled threads of all kinds of reasoning, of the exact laws of 
thought, according to which alone the passage from one point to 
another is, under all arrangement of terms, admissible. I am aware 
that many may be disposed to question altogether the benefit 
supposed to be conferred on the present generation by the trans- 
mission, even with modern modifications, of this logical product 
of Greek Thought; but with all due respect to these wnlogical 
people, though they may not like Logic, I venture to affirm that its 
creation as a science is a boon. If, with Terence, we each can say 
with emphasis, ‘‘I am a man, and I deem nothing human a matter 
of indifference to me,’’ so, as students of science in its highest and 
truest sense, we ought to be able enthusiastically to say, ‘‘ Nothing 
having the form of science can be a matter of indifference to us.” 
This universe is most beautiful. The domains of matter and mind 
challenge our research. All around, law, strong, uniform, inter- 
blended, holds beneficent and ceaseless sway. In the name of 
Science, then, he must be regarded as a man worthy of honour, 
who, selecting for his sphere of research the department of 
universal nature in which mental processes pertaining to reasoning 
are the phenomena to be examined, resolves all their apparent 
tanglement into the orderly dependence of invariable law, and 
expresses this organised law in terms that render the human mind 
ever after master of the subject. Such a man accomplishes for one 
department in the mental sphere what the astronomer accomplishes 
in the material sphere, when, detecting and reducing to available 
formule the laws which find embodiment in the movements of 
the heavenly bodies, he blesses the human intellect by doing his 
part to put the mind in possession of an exact knowledge of the 
