them in possession of a secret of science, or made them master of a new field of knowledge.

Common sense is the substratum of all logic. Common sense is the natural sense of mankind. It is founded on common observation and experience. It is modest and plain and unsophisticated. It sees with everybody's eyes and hears with everybody's ears. It has no capricious distinctions, no partialities, and no mysteries. It never equivocates and never trifles. Its language is always the same, and is always intelligible. It is known by its perspicuity of speech and singleness of purpose. The most prudent of all the children of fact, it never forsakes nature or reason. Some outline laws for its employment, if they can be indicated, must be better than its popular aimless and desultory use.

PREFACE OF 1866.

One has no right to make a literary subject political—that is, to make it partisan; but to give a political motive which concerns all equally, for promoting a literary study, is allowable, and does not partake of the nature of party politics. One may, like Cobbett, look on literature with political eyes, without, like him, making it a vehicle of party attacks.

In this country, where the political genius of the people lies in self-government—where the public growth of the people and their internal liberty depend upon their capacity to manage their own affairs—the art of public speaking has political importance to every aide in politics.

To be able to take a subject well in hand, like a stage-coach driver does his horses—to hold the reins of your arguments firmly—to direct and drive well home the burden of your meaning, is a power which every man ought to study to attain, who rises to address a council, or stands up on a platform to convince a meeting.

A LOGIC OF FACTS.

CHAPTER I. THE LOGIC OF THE SCHOOLS

It is a humiliating reflection that mankind never reasoned so ill as when they most professed to cultivate the art of reasoning.—Life of Galileo, p. 1. society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

Common sense—the foundation of logic—first received (to a limited extent) the regularity of an art and the certainty of a science, from the master hand of Aristotle. Impartial scholars, familiar with his writings on logic, allow them to have not only ingenuity but real merit; and his admirers contend that he has been misunderstood by some and abused by others. This is highly probable, as we are certain that when his works were interpreted by the schools, and his logic proclaimed the great text-book of knowledge and the only weapon of truth, 'men's minds, instead of studying nature, were in an endless ferment about occult qualities and imaginary essences; little was talked of but intention and remission, proportion and degree, infinity, formality, quiddity and individuality.'* Logic then was jargon, controversy chicane, and truth a shuttlecock, with which the disputants respectively played, or the object which they mutually disguised. Logic was a labyrinth in which the subtlest lost their Way—a bourne from which the traveller after truth seldom returned.

A striking illustration of this has been furnished by a candid and distinguished writer—Dr. Reid. 'Of the analytics and of the topics of Aristotle, ingenuousness requires me to confess, that though I have often purposed to read the whole with care, and to understand what is intelligible, yet my courage and patience always failed me before I had done. Why should I throw away so much time and painful attention upon a thing of so little real use? If I had lived in those ages when the knowledge of Aristotle's Organon entitled a man to the highest rank in philosophy, ambition might have Induced me to employ upon it some years of painful study; and, less, I conceive, would not be sufficient. Such reflections as these always got the better of my resolution.'*

Dr. Whately, who has for many years occupied the throne of Logic and whose work maybe taken, from its currency in our colleges and academies, as the representative of the logic of the schools, seems to obviate all objections to the abstruseness of this subject by a counter charge, to the effect that logic is now underrated only because it has been overrated. But it is not the complexity found in it, but the laudations bestowed upon it which have brought it into neglect. Dr. Whately contends that certain writers, 'by representing logic as furnishing the sole instrument for the discovery of truth in all subjects, and as teaching the use of the intellectual faculties in general, raised expectations which could not be realised, and which naturally led to a reaction—to logic being regarded as utterly futile and empty.'** Deeply deploring this kind of injury, from which many important arts have suffered, I am neither disposed to defend such a course, nor to imitate it. But I demur to the truth of this representation with regard to logic. If logic be not the 'sole instrument for the discovery of truth in all subjects,' it is certainly the principal one. Instead of charging scholastic logicians with having unduly 'raised,' it would be nearer the truth, in my opinion, to say that they have confused 'expectations' by intricate machinery and extreme elaborations.

Intricacy and minuteness of detail might be a trifling disqualification did they lead to something immediately practical. But Dr. Whately contends that logic, in the most extensive sense which the name can, with propriety, be made to bear, is that of the science, and also the art of reasonings 'Inasmuch as logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, it is strictly a science, while considered in reference to the practical rules it furnishes it is an art.'* He confines the province of logic, as an art, to 'employing language properly for the purpose of reasoning,' and restricts the logician to the use of the syllogism as the sole test of argument. Mr. Augustus de Morgan thus exhibits the spirit of Whately's restriction:—

Logic has nothing to do with the truth of the facts, opinions, or presumptions, from which an inference is derived; but simply takes care that the inference shall certainly be true if the premises be true.'

It has been, and is to be, objected, that logic, thus confined, 'leaves untouched the greatest difficulties, and those which are the sources of the greatest errors in reasoning.' To this powerful objection Dr. Whately thinks it sufficient to reply, that 'no art is to be censured for not teaching more than falls within its province, and, indeed, more than can be taught by any conceivable art. Such a system of universal knowledge as should instruct us in the full meaning or meanings of every term, and the truth or falsity, certainty or uncertainty of every proposition, thus superseding all other studies, it is most unphilosophical to expect, or even to imagine. And to find fault with logic for not performing this, is as if one should object to optics for not giving sight to the blind—or complain of a reading glass for being of no service to a person who had never learnt to read.'*** This would be a most conclusive answer if confident assertion could be accepted in lieu of proof. The objection still remains to be removed. We may still demand, does it