Elements of Logic: On the Basis of Lectures by William Barron ... With Large ...

SOME people imagine that Logic is a frivolous, an ostentatious, at best an unnecessary art, which may serve to puzzle and perplex, but can be of little utility in business or philosophy. Others are perhaps of opinion, though it were more useful than it is, yet it requires a study so dry and uninteresting, so abstract and difficult, that few inquirers have patience to make any progress in it, or to convert it to any advantage.

Were the system I have to lay before you composed of the idle syllogism of the schools, which till lately was the only system taught in our colleges, I should not have confidence to maintain, that there was not a great deal of foundation for the first objection. In the short account of that system which I have to advance, I believe it will appear, that it is a vain and unavailing instrument of truth and knowledge.

But, though the syllogism of the schools, and the old art of logic, be admitted to be idle systems, yet we surely have more candor than to infer, that there is no art at all in reasoning; that there is no such thing as good reasoning; or that it is of little use to be a good reasoner. I, on the contrary, will take for granted, that there is no accomplishment or qualification any man can acquire more important. Whether, then, you become in life men of speculation, or men of business, in every step you take, your rational faculty must be con

stantly exerted; and the following lectures are calculated entirely to render you expert and successful in that exercise.

As to the second objection, that the study is uninteresting, dry, and difficult, the proper answer is, that it is no more so than every exercise of the understanding naturally is, and must be. There is nothing in it either so uninteresting, so dry, or so difficult, which any person possessed of ordinary capacity may not easily surmount, and which every person must surmount, who expects to acquire, either in philosophy, literature, or business, as much use of his understanding as to attend to any train of thought. It is by the proper use of his understanding that man attains his eminent characteristic of being rational. It is by the proper use of his understanding that he can make any progress in knowledge. It is by the same means only that he can obtain the flattering distinctions claimed by superior judgment, and by which he can avoid the disgrace attached to ignorance and stupidity. In a word, to all orders of men, true logic pretends to lend the most salutary aid. Her pretensions are at least commendable, and her efforts are entitled to the most patient reflection and candid examination.*

[* Whatever has at any time been concluded justly, whatever knowledge has been acquired otherwise than by immediate intuition, depended upon the observance of the laws which it is the province of logic to investigate. If the conclusions are just, and the knowledge sound, those laws have actually been observed. We need not, therefore, seek any further for a solution of the question, so often agitated, respecting the utility of logic. If a science of logic exists, or is capable of existing, it must be useful. If there be rules to which every mind conforms in every instance in which it judges rightly, there seems little necessity for discussion whether a person is more likely to observe those rules, when he knows the rules, than when he is unacquainted with them.-Mills' Logic.

ELEMENTS OF LOGIC.

LECTURE I.

OBJECT OF LOGIC-OPERATIONS OF THE MIND-IDEAS-SIMPLE AND COMPLEX-DISTINCT AND OBSCURE.

THE object of education is to increase knowledge, to refine imagination, to improve taste, and to prepare us for acting a part in life, respectable and useful in itself, as well as advantageous and honorable to the public.

The professed purpose of logic is to teach the right use of reason, both in the investigation and in the coinmunication of truth; to inform us how to introduce clearness and good order among our ideas; to explain the operations of the mind, which are conversant about them; and to guard us, in performing these operations, against falling into error.*

The understanding is occupied entirely about knowledge. The end of all science is to instruct us in knowledge; and the same end is pursued by all study, whether prudential, political, moral, or mechanical. In whatever way we exert our understanding, it is to obtain some information we did not possess before;

[* Logic, accurately defined, is the art of thinking and reasoning justly: it traces the progress of our knowledge from our first and most simple conceptions through all their different combinations, and all those numerous deductions that result from variously comparing them with one another.-London Cyc.]

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