have intruded it into the province of Natural Philosophy, and regarded the Syllogism as an engine for the investigation of nature; while they overlooked the extensive field that was before them within the legitimate limits of the science; and perceived not the importance and difficulty of the task, of completing and properly filling up the inasterly sketch before them. Ammonius. The writings of Aristotle were not only for the most part absolutely lost to the world for about two centuries, but seem to have been but little studied for a long time after their recovery. An art, however, of Logic, derived from the principles traditionally preserved by his disciples, seems to have been generally known, and to have been employed by Cicero in his philosophical works; but the pursuit of the science seems to have been abandoned for a long time. As early in the Christian era as the second and third centuries, the Peripatetic doctrines experienced a considerable revival; and we meet with the names of Galen, Ammonius, (who seems to have Galen, taken the lead among the commentators on Aristotle,) Alexander of Alexander, Aphrodisias, and Porphyry, as logicians; but it is not till the close Porphyry. of the fifth century, or the beginning of the sixth, that Aristotle's logical works were translated into Latin by the celebrated Boethius. Boethius. Not one of these seems to have made any considerable advances in developing the theory of reasoning. Of the labours of Galen (who added the insignificant fourth Figure to the three recognised by Aristotle) little is known; and Porphyry's principal work is merely on the predicables. We have little of the science till the revival of learning among the Arabians, by whom Aristotle's treatises on this as well as on other subjects, were eagerly studied. 3. Passing by the names of some Byzantine writers of no great Schoolmen importance, we come to the times of the Schoolmen; whose waste of ingenuity, and frivolous subtlety of disputation, have been often made the subject of complaints, into the justice of which it is unnecessary here fully to inquire. It may be sufficient to observe, that their fault did not lie in their diligent study of Logic, and the high value they set upon it, but in their utterly mistaking the true nature and object of the science; and by the attempt to employ it for the purpose of physical discoveries, involving every subject in a mist of words, to the exclusion of sound philosophical investigation. Their errors may serve to account for the strong terms in which Bacon Bacon. sometimes appears to censure logical pursuits; but that this censure was intended to bear against the extravagant perversions, not the legitimate cultivation, of the science, may be proved from his own observations on the subject, in his Advancement of Learning. "Had Bacon lived in the present day, I am inclined to think he would have made his chief complaint against unmethodized inquiry and 2 Born about A.D. 475, and died about A.D. 524. $ Of the character of the School-divini ty, Dr. Hampden's Bampton Lectures Locke. illogical reasoning. Certainly he would not have complained of Dialectics as corrupting Philosophy. To guard now against the evils prevalent in his time, would be to fortify a town against battering-rams, instead of against cannon. His moderation, however, was not imitated in other quarters. Even Locke confounds in one sweeping censure the Aristotelic theory, with the absurd misapplications and perversions of it in later years. His objection to the science, as unserviceable in the discovery of truth, (which has of late been often repeated,) while it holds good in reference to many (misnamed) logicians, indicates that, with regard to the true nature of the science itself, he had no clearer notions than they have, of the just limits of logical science, as confined to the theory of Reasoning; and of the distinct character of that operation from the observations and experiments which are essential to the study of Nature. For instance, in chap. xvii. "on Reason," (which, by the way, he perpetually confounds with Reasoning,) he says, in 2 4, "If syllogisms must be taken for the only proper instrument of reason and means of knowledge, it will follow, that before Aristotle there was not one man that did or could know any thing by reason; and that since the invention of syllogisms there is not one in ten thousand that doth. But God has not been so sparing to men to make them barely two-legged creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them rational, i.e. those few of them that he could get so to examine the grounds of syllogisms, as to see that in above threescore ways that three propositions may be laid together, there are but fourteen wherein one may be sure that the conclusion is right, &c. "God has been more bountiful to mankind than so: He has given them a mind that can reason without being instructed in methods of syllogizing," &c. All this is not at all less absurd than if any one, on being told of the discoveries of modern chemists respecting caloric, and on hearing described the process by which it is conducted through a boiler into the water, which it converts into a gas of sufficient elasticity to overcome the pressure of the atmosphere, &c., should reply, "If all this were so, it would follow that before the time of these chemists no one ever did or could make any liquor boil.” He presently after inserts an encomium upon Aristotle, in which he is equally unfortunate; he praises him for the "invention of syllogisms:" to which he certainly had no more claim than Linnæus to the creation of plants and animals; or Harvey, to the praise of having made the blood circulate; or Lavoisier, to that of having formed the atmosphere we breathe. And the utility of this invention consists, according to him, in the great service done against "those who were not ashamed to deny any thing:" a service which never Pol. Econ. Lect. ix. p. 237. * could have been performed, had syllogisms been an invention or discovery of Aristotle's; for what sophist could ever have consented to restrict himself to one particular kind of arguments, dictated by his opponent? In an ordinary, obscure, and trifling writer, all this confusion of thought and common-place declamation might as well have been left unnoticed; but it is due to the general ability and to the celebrity of such an author as Locke, that errors of this kind should be exposed. An error apparently different, but substantially the same, pervades Watts. the treatises of Watts, and some other modern writers on the subject. Perceiving the inadequacy of the syllogistic theory to the vast purposes to which others had attempted to apply it, he still craved after the attainment of some equally comprehensive and all-powerful system; which he accordingly attempted to construct under the title of The right use of Reason,-which was to be a method of invigorating and properly directing all the powers of the mind:a most magnificent object indeed, but one which not only does not fall under the province of Logic, but cannot be accomplished by any one science or system that can even be conceived to exist. The attempt to comprehend so wide a field, is no extension of science, but a mere verbal generalization, which leads only to vague and barren declamation. It is not perhaps much to be wondered at, that in still later times several ingenious writers, forming their notions of the science itself from professed masters in it, such as have just been alluded to, and judging of its value from their failures, should have treated the Aristotelic system with so much reprobation and scorn. of some The vague aspirations of some of these writers after a "true" Extravagant "rational" -"philosophical system of Logic," which, year after expectations year, and generation after generation, is talked of, and hoped for, writers. and almost promised, but which is acknowledged to have never yet existed, may recall to one's mind the gorgeous visions which floated before the imagination of the Alchemists, of the Philosopher's Stone, and the Universal Medicine; and which made them regard with impatience and with scorn the humble labours of existing Metallurgy and Pharmacy. I believe that in respect of the present subject, the views I am alluding to arise in great measure from men's not perceiving that Language, of some kind or other, is (as will be more fully shown hereafter) an indispensable instrument of all Reasoning that properly deserves the name. And hence it is that 6 6 I have even seen a complaint made, that the introduction of some such perfect system has been prevented by the application of the term Logic to that which is commonly so called. We do not find, however, that the application of the names of Astronomy and Chemistry to the studies formerly so called, prevented the origination of more philosophical sys tems. Hobbes, who has very clearly pointed this out, has unhappily diminished the benefit that might have been derived from much that he has written, by the prejudice he has raised against himself through his exceptionable doctrines in Morals, Politics, and Religion. Realism. Tendency to one may find such writers as I allude to speaking disdainfully of "rules applicable merely to reasoning in words;'-representing Language as serviceable only" in conveying arguments to another;" and even as "limiting the play of our faculties;" and again as rendering the mental perception of all abstract truths obscure and confused, in so far as the rude symbol of each idea is taken in the stead of the idea itself;" with other such expressions, emanating from that which is in truth the ancient and still prevalent doctrine of "Realism." Incorrect views of the nature of the science. 66 The Syllogistic theory has usually been considered by these objectors as professing to furnish a peculiar method of reasoning, instead of a method of analyzing that mental process which must invariably take place in all correct reasoning; and accordingly they have contrasted the ordinary mode of reasoning with the syllogistic, and have brought forward with an air of triumph the argumentative skill of many who never learned the system; a mistake no less gross than if any one should regard Grammar as a peculiar Language, and should contend against its utility, on the ground that many speak correctly who never studied the principles of grammar. For Logic, which is, as it were, the Grammar of Reasoning, does not bring forward the regular Syllogism as a distinct mode of argumentation, designed to be substituted for any other mode; but as the form to which all correct reasoning may be ultimately reduced: and which, consequently, serves the purpose (when we are employing Logic as an art) of a test to try the validity of any argument; in the same manner as by chemical analysis we develop and submit to a distinct examination the elements of which any compound body is composed, and are thus enabled to detect any latent sophistication and impurity. 24. Many misconceptions not very dissimilar to those of Locke, which continue to prevail, more or less, in the present day, will be hereafter noticed, as far as is needful, in appropriate places. In this Introduction it would be unsuitable to advert to them except very briefly, and that, only with a view to caution the learner, unused to these studies, against being disheartened in the outset, by hearing, generally, that objections have been raised against the leading principles of the science, by writers of considerable repute; objections which he will hardly suppose to be, in so great a degree as they really are, either founded on mistake, or unimportant, and turning, in reality, on mere verbal questions. Strange as it may seem, there are some, (I suspect not a few,) who even go a step further, and consider Logic as something opposed to right reasoning. I have seen a Review of a work, which the Reviewer characterised as the production of an able Logician, and which he therefore concluded was likely to have influence with such as will not reason! The "not" might naturally have been regarded as a misprint, but that the context shows that such was the reviewer's real meaning. On seeing such a passage written in the 19th century, who can wonder that in the Middle Ages, Grammar ("Gramarye") was regarded as a kind of magical art? For instance, some, he may be told, have maintained that men reason,- —or that they may reason,-from a single premiss, without any other being either expressed or understood; that men may, and do, reason from one individual case to another, without the intervention of any general [universal] proposition, whether stated or implied; -that the inferences from Induction are not drawn by any process that is, in substance, Syllogistic;-that the conclusion of a Syllogism is not really inferred from the Premises; that a Syllogism is nothing but a kind of trap for ensnaring the incautious; and that it necessarily involves the fallacy of "begging the question;" with other such formidably-sounding objections; which, when simply spoken of as being afloat, and as maintained by able men, are likely to be supposed far more powerful than they will be found on a closer examination. Of those who speak of a single premiss being sufficient to warrant a conclusion, some, it will be found, were confining their thoughts to such flat and puerile examples as Logical writers are too apt to employ exclusively; as "Socrates is a man; therefore he is a living creature, &c.;" in which the conclusion had been already stated in the one premiss, to any one who does but understand the meaning of the words; "living-creature" being a part of what is signified in the very term "Man." But in such an instance as this; "He has swallowed a cup of laurel-water, therefore he has taken poison,' the inference is one which no one could draw who should be igno rant-as every body was, less than a century ago, (though using the word in the same sense as now, to signify a "liquor distilled from laurel leaves,") that this liquor is poisonous. Others again, when they speak of reasoning from one individual instance to another, without any universal premiss, mean sometimes, that no such premiss is expressed, (which is the case oftener than not) and that perhaps even the reasoner himself, if possessed of no great command of language, might be at a loss to state it correctly.R And indeed it continually happens that even long trains of reasoning will flash through the mind with such rapidity that the process It may be added, that in inward solitary reasoning, many, and perhaps most persons, but especially those not much accustomed to read or speak concerning the subjects that occupy their thoughts, make use, partly, of signs that are not arbitrary and conventional, but which consist of mental conceptions of individual objects; taken, each, as a representative of a Class. E.G. A person practically conversant with mechanical operations, but not with discussions of them in words, may form a conception of-in colloquial phrase, figure to himself "-a certain field or room, with whose shape he is familiar, and may employ this in his inward trains of thought, as a Sign, to resent, for instance," parallelogram" 66 or "trapezium," &c.; or he may “figure to himself" a man raising a weight by means of a pole, and may use this conception as a general sign, in place of the term "lever" and the terms themselves he may be unacquainted with; in which case he will be at a loss to impart distinctly to others his own reasonings; and in the attempt, will often express himself (as one may frequently observe in practical men unused to reading and speaking) not only indistinctly, but even erroneously. See below, § 5. Hence, partly, may have arisen the belief in those supposed "abstract ideas" which will be hereafter alluded to, and in the possibility of reasoning without the use of any Signs at all. |