From the PREFACE. IF we look back half a century we find Formal Logic taught in nearly all the colleges of Great Britain and America, but exercising an influence infinitely less than nothing (to use a phrase of Plato's) on the thought of the countries. Some of the professors and tutors were expounding it in a dry and technical manner, which wearied young men of spirit, and bred a distaste for the study; while others adopted an apologetic tone for occupying even a brief space with so antiquated a department, and threw out ...
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From the PREFACE. IF we look back half a century we find Formal Logic taught in nearly all the colleges of Great Britain and America, but exercising an influence infinitely less than nothing (to use a phrase of Plato's) on the thought of the countries. Some of the professors and tutors were expounding it in a dry and technical manner, which wearied young men of spirit, and bred a distaste for the study; while others adopted an apologetic tone for occupying even a brief space with so antiquated a department, and threw out hints of a new Logic as about to appear and supersede the old. The lingering life maintained by that old Aristotelian and Scholastic Logic, in spite of the ridicule poured upon it by nearly all the fresh thinkers of Europe for two or three centuries after the revival of letters, is an extraordinary fact in the history of philosophy; I believe it can be accounted for only by supposing that the syllogism is substantially the correct analysis of the process which passes through the mind in reasoning. Certain it is that no proffered logical system has been able to set aside the Aristotelian, whether devised by Ramus, by the school of Descartes, the school of Locke, or the school of Condillac; all have disappeared after creating a brief expectation followed by a final disappointment. It is a remarkable circumstance that the revived taste for logical studies in the last age proceeded from a restoration of the old Logic by two distinguished men, both reformers in their way, but both admirers of the Analytic of Aristotle. I refer to Archbishop Whately and Sir William Hamilton. Whately first gave his views to the public in an article in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana , which was expanded into his Elements of Logic in 1826. The publication constitutes an era in the history of the study in Great Britain and America. The admirable defence of the old Logic against the objections of such men as Principal Campbell and Dugald Stewart, and still more, the fresh and apt examples substituted for the dry stock ones which had been in use for a thousand or two thousand years, speedily attracted the favorable attention of the young thinkers of the times; and Aristotle was once more in the ascendant. But while Whately's Elements is an interesting and healthy work, it can scarcely be described as specially a philosophic one. In order to complete the reaction, another thinker had to appear, and subject the whole science to a critical examination fitted to satisfy the deeper philosophic mind of the times. It is a curious circumstance that Hamilton uttered his first oracular declarations on Logic in a severe article on Whately, in the Edinburgh Review , published afterwards in his Discussions . He embraced the opportunity to bring forth the result of his profound researches, and specially to introduce to the English speaking countries, the Logic which had sprung up in Germany out of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason . Since that date, Logic has had a greater amount of interest collected round it in Great Britain than any other mental science, and has become incorporated with the freshest and brightest thought of the country. The interest in the study has been increased by the Logic of Mr. John Stuart Mill, who has evidently felt the influence of Whately in the respect which he pays to Formal Logic, but adheres, as a whole, to the principles of his father, Mr. James Mill, introducing some elements from the cognate Positive Philosophy of M. Comte. Mr. Mill has given an impulse to the study, not by the portion of his work which treats of Formal Logic-which is not of much scientific value-but by his valuable exposition of the Logic of Induction, which would have been of much more value had he left out the constant defences of his empirical metaphysics....
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