had a thorough acquaintance with Logic been a more common qualification than it is. Not only all those who are engaged in or designed for the sacred ministry, but all others who are sensible that the cause of true religion is not a concern of the ministry alone, should remember that this is no time to forego any of the advantages which that cause may derive from an active and judicious cultivation of the faculties. It is not, however, solely or chiefly for polemical purposes that the cultivation of the reasoning faculty is desirable; in persuading and investigating, in learning or teaching, in all the multitude of cases, in which it is our object to arrive at just conclusions, or to lead others to them, it is most important. A knowledge of logical rules will not indeed supply the want of other knowledge, nor was it even proposed, by any one who really understood the science, to substitute it for any other; but it is no less true that no other can be substituted for it: that it is valuable in every branch of study; and that it enables us to use the knowledge we possess to the greatest advantage."

We cannot here forbear to mention that it was our privilege to be personally acquainted with one, who, if ever man was, was a master in Logic; and very fortunately so, for no man, since the seventeenth century was ever more engaged in controversy; and what was the consequence? It is immediately and every where apparent. The ease with which he, on every occasion, managed his adversary; the dexterity he displayed in immediately detecting the fallacy, wherever and however concealed; the facility he evinced in dissipating his illogical conclusions, and the suavity and temper which were prevalent through the whole, left him decidedly, in the estimation of every rational and candid mind, in undisputed possession of the field:-and why ?-He was an eminent Logician.

But however we would advocate the acquisition of truth, it is by no means our intention to intimate that Logic, or the Art of Reasoning, is the only means by which Truth, in every sense, is discovered. To the representation of Logic as the method of discovering Truth, as if it were the only method; or even a method, without stating what are those truths we are to expect from the process which Logic institutes, may be in no small degree attributed the misunderstanding of the specific object it proposes. TRUTHS are either those of INFORMATION or INSTRUCTION. The former we derive from observation or testimony, or even from experiment instituted at the time, by a conjectural conclusion deduced from assumed premises. The latter, truths of Instruction, we derive from data, which though they may be in the possession of others, yet probably have been employed either to no purpose, or misemployed by fallacy and incorrect reasoning, to a wrong one. data fall within the province of Logic, either from them to deduce a truth not before perceived as a necessary consequence of the premises they afford; or to detect an error resulting from their misapplication.

These

"When it is asked," says Dr. Whately, "whether such great discoveries as have been made in Natural Philosophy, were accomplished or can be accomplished by Reasoning? the inquirer should be reminded that the question is ambiguous. It may be answered in the affirmative, if by Reasoning is meant to be included, the assumption of Premises." To the assumption of premises, frequently scientific men, in search for some new or undiscovered truth, are indebted; from which, though at first, nothing better than a probable conjecture can be inferred, yet that conjectural inference may institute a course of experiments, which may ultimately establish the fact. Thus Sir Humphrey Davy finding that the flame of hydrogen gas was not communicated through a long slender tube, conjectured that a shorter, but still slenderer tube, would answer the same purpose. This led him to try the experiment, in which by successively shortening the tube, and at the same time lessening its bore, he arrived at last at the wiregauze of his safety-lamp." Now throughout the whole of this process, assumed premises, conjecture, experiment, it is evident that a kind of inductive reasoning was going on, that is, so far as reasoning hypothetically, and in a necessary case, from assumed premises, is acting until positive ones can supply their place; yet it is not that strictly, in which Logic, that pretends not to the discovery of new Truths in an unrestricted sense, is concerned.

TRUTHS OF INFORMATION belong to the sciences; to Theology, Ethics, Jurisprudence, to the Arts, and to the Business and Experience of common life; and a distinct class of them to each. For the acquisition of these, the sciences, and the several sources respectively to which Truths of Information belong, must be duly consulted. These are the volumes from which we have to cull this kind of intellectual furniture, and nothing else can properly communicate it. It is here too that we not only have to derive our Information, and all the truth which it implies, but, moreover, clear and distinct ideas of each individual, both in its isolated and relative position, without which all our knowledge is vain. The Instructor in Logic takes it for granted that his pupil comes prepared with these, that he has them not to seek, or at least that he is furnished with as many as are necessary for his immediate

purpose.

It is of considerable importance in this early stage of our inquiry, to state distinctly that it is to the sciences, and to the proper sources that we must look for Information; but it is the peculiar province of Logic to teach the most salutary and practical use of the knowledge we possess, either for the purpose of instructing ourselves or others, by that only argumentative process, which must necessarily, in every rational mind, demand conviction; or for the refutation of conclusions, whether deduced from irrelevant premises, or falsely derived from true ones; sophisms which are so frequently exemplified by those who are dispossessed of that

discrimination, and unacquainted with the mode of detecting fallacy which it is the business of Logic to impart.

When we, on first opening the pages of Euclid, read, “ a line is length without breadth;" "a plane reetilineal angle is the inclination of two straight lines to one another that meet in a point;" "that a triangle is a plane figure bounded by three lines," &c.; from hence we derive IDEAS, and TRUTHS OF INFORMATION; but it is not the business of Logic to teach us these: these are nothing but the mere furniture, the requisite data, that we must possess, before we can commence and successfully employ to any benefi cial purpose, the argumentative process. But when we are once furnished with the prerequisite terms and premises, and come to read, "If two triangles have two sides, and the included angle in the one, equal two sides and the included angle in the other, the triangles will be equal and identical in all respects," we require the demonstrative or argumentative process; the result afforded by which is a TRUTH OF INSTRUCTION, which it is the province of Reasoning or Logic to establish on premises from which the proof is legitimately derived.

Nothing is more calculated to throw into the shade, if not most unjustly into disrepute, an art or science, than misrepresenting its distinct and specific object; loading it with more than it professes to perform, imputing to it obligations which are either inconsistent with itself, or disreputable in themselves. A time was, when the object of Astronomy was not distinguished from that of Astrology, or the pretended art of divining futurities from the configurations and motions of the heavenly bodies. And had not Astronomy been happily rescued from this misconception, and established on the basis of its own independent reputation, it might to the present day, in the estimation of the uninformed, have ranked in a grade equally low with that of palmistry, legerdemain or necromancy. A time existed in which even the respectable science of Chemistry was merged into the mystified shades of Alchemy, whose most popular and ostensible object was to find the secret of turning all things into gold; or the panacea, the universal cure of all diseases to which humanity is subject, without excepting even mortality itself. Chemistry, however, very fortunately has emerged from this eclipse, and presents itself disencumbered of distortions not its own, in that elegant form in which it is at once so interesting and useful to society.

But who are they, that from want of proper discrimination, have for a period nearly equal to the night of Alchemy, succeeded to throw the shades of misrepresentation on the peculiar and specific object of Logic, and that so artfully, as to convert characters, in other respects of considerable respectability and importance in the Republic of Letters, to their own heresy? Had these been the mere tyros in the art, those who had contented themselves with merely some hasty glances at an introductory chapter, there would

ย

66

have been nothing in the circumstance uncommon, and they would have verified only the ancient adage, so general in its application, "damnunt quod non intelligunt," they condemn what they do not understand. For the honor of those, however, who have professedly undertaken to teach the art, or to write voluminous treatises on the science, we could wish that we had it not to say, that the charge lies exclusively at their door, Συ ει ὁ διδασκαλος, και ταυτα ου γινώσκεις, “ Art thou a teacher, and knowest not these things?" implies a charge equally applicable at present as in former times. Amongst them we could mention one, who has written a volume with no other effect, than to evince the possibility of a man's writing more than 300 pages on a subject, which he, from the first time he took up his pen to the last page it had written, evidently did not understand. To discover a ship at sea, 300 miles from the port whence she had sailed, without any one on board knowing either where they were, or whither they were going, would lead to the inference that neither compass was in the binnacle, nor navigator in the cabin; but to find a being reputed intellectual, navigating over 300 pages of heterogeneous and irrelevant matter, performing a sort of zig-zag traverse wide of the mark, and having no bearing on the object originally proposed, is merely one example, among the many thousands which might be added, of the danger of following any one, merely because he is a teacher, without the test of our own examination and scrutiny, and the exercise of that function which it is the spe cific object of Logic itself to develope and explain.

No science can be expected to make any considerable progress, which instead of being regularly cultivated on right principles, has been liable to the misrepresentation of those who never correctly understood its specific object themselves, nor therefore could teach it to others. From the time of the schoolmen, censured by Bacon, rather for their abuse of the art, than for any legitimate purpose to which they applied it, down to the present, we meet with a host of authors, who have either written expressly on the same, or more or less made remarks thereon; which leads to a discovery no less strange than true, that very few clearly understood the subject!! Only two writers, the former about the middle of the last century, and the latter, Dr. Whately, have proved that they were aware that Logic is chiefly concerned with the THIRD ACT of the mind, ARGUMENTATION; and with SUCH EXPRESSION OF IT as correctly to convey its conclusiveness to others. These two alone appear to have cleared the equation from the co-efficients with which it was encumbered, from quantities foreign to its distinct intention, and that concealed it in mists of metaphysical irrelevancy.

It is therefore not unreasonable to hope, that as the age at last arrived, when Astronomy threw away the anamorphosis of Astrology, by which she was disfigured; and Chemistry of Alchemy, so Logic, with equal success, will divest herself of all the voluminous mysticisms quite foreign to her definite design, and that her

claim to utility will appear not less clear, than does the precious metal when detached from the ore, that has for ages concealed it from the use and general benefit of mankind.

Of all the preceding Treatises on Logic, Dr. Whately's * may be justly entitled the chef-d'œuvre. To his work, this is, throughout avowedly indebted. His remarks on the specific intention of the art, and on the identity of the process of argumentation in the mind, whether expressed artificially or not, are at once too important and interesting to be omitted; and their value alone will be a sufficient apology for their insertion.

"With the exception of Aristotle, scarcely a writer on Logic can be mentioned, who has clearly perceived, and steadily kept in view its real nature and object. Before his time, no distinction was made between the science of which we are speaking, and that which is now called metaphysics. It is not, therefore, much to be wondered at, that in still later times, several ingenious writers, forming their notions from professed masters of the science, and judging of its value from their failures, should have treated the system, as if it were the Aristotelian, with such unwarrantable reprobation. Therefore they have assailed the study with a host of objections, so totally irrelevant, as might excite astonishment in any one who did not fully estimate the force of prejudice," having no other basis than that of misconception.

"By these objectors, Logic has been considered 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. For Logic 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 as a test to try the validity of any argument; in the same manner as by chemical analysis we develope, and submit to a distinct examination the elements of which any compound body is constituted, and are thus enabled to detect any latent sophistication or impurity."

"One of the chief impediments to the attainment of a just view of the nature and object of Logic, is the not fully understanding the SAMENESS of the reasoning process in all cases. If as the ordinary mode of speaking would seem to indicate, mathematical, theological, metaphysical and political reasoning were essentially different from each other, or different kinds of reasoning, it would follow that there must be so many different species of Logic. And such is perhaps the most prevailing misconception. Others again, who are aware that the simple System of Logic, may be applied to

*"Elements of Logic, comprising the substance of the article in the Encyclopedia Metropolitana, by R. Whately, D. D. Principal of St. Alban's Hall and late Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford."

B