logician, of perhaps very inferior talents, would be able at once to discern and to mark it. It was happily remarked by a late lawyer of eminence, in a letter to his son, that nothing is superior to logic for setting a fine edge on the understanding."*

Although the correctness of this contrast were to be admitted, the most important point would still be left untouched.

The logician described might, doubtless, possess a superiority over an antagonist who had never attended to the nature of reasoning at all, or who was not familiar with its different phases; but, let us ask, how would he compare with one who had studied the subject in the pages of Locke and Stewart, or in the light in which it has been the aim of this treatise to place it; whose mind had been familiarised with what we are told the scholastic logic disowns-the scrutiny of premises, and with the processes of direct contingent reasoning, and especially the formation of general laws from collected facts; who was capable of discerning the exact range of the scholastic system; who could discriminate a major premise arrived at by

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Familiar Commentary, p. 4. It may amuse the reader to compare Mr. Walker's testimony with that of Locke. "I have known," the latter says, a man unskilful in syllogism, who at first hearing could perceive the weakness and inconclusiveness of a long, artificial, and plausible discourse, wherewith others better skilled in syllogism have been misled. And I believe there are few of my readers who do not know such.”—Essay on Human Understanding, book iv. chap. xvii.

a process of induction, from a useless maxim forced into the same position upon an already effective enthymeme, like a crutch thrust into the hands of a perfectly sound man; and who, through the mere forms of reasoning, could see whether an inference was to be regarded as contingently or conclusively demonstrated; who, in a word, had within him a distinct consciousness of what he was about, of the nature of the processes in his own mind, and a clear view of the bearing of the implicated facts, independently of the forms and phraseology in which they might be expressed?

Although one who had studied an erroneous theory, and an art founded upon it, in which there would probably be a mixture of truth and error, might carry off the palm in a contest with an adversary who had paid no attention to the nature of reasoning at all, it is allowable to suppose that he would, in his turn, find himself inferior to another antagonist who was master of a more correct theory than his own.

But a still more important question remains: which of the two would be likely to have greater success, not in mere personal controversy, but in the pursuit of truth, in the prosecution of science, in the estimation of evidence, and in drawing with accuracy those numberless conclusions which are required from every one by the daily exigencies of life?

It may be considered as a remarkable circum

stance, in confirmation of these views of the small practical value of the scholastic logic, that in the rapid progress of science which has marked the last two hundred years, it appears to have had no share and to have yielded no assistance; nor have we any evidence that the greatest philosophers and the most effective reasoners either in practical or speculative matters (Leibnitz perhaps excepted) had so much as a tolerable acquaintance with it. Some of them have even been accused of evincing by occasional errors in their casual references, or their depreciating comments, how little they understood what they referred to or assailed.

Even those writers who have recently attempted to revive the attention of the world to its merits seem to have contented themselves with a theoretical advocacy of its claims; for their writings furnish few proofs that its technical distinctions and mechanical rules have been pressed into actual service. A casual notice here and there that some syllogism which they are employing or commenting upon, ranks under Barbara or Baroko, is all that we meet with.

Should it be replied to this allegation, that these logicians may nevertheless have been tacitly guided by its rules, although they have not allowed the fact to appear; the reply may be admitted as possibly true, although not very probably so, while we have the opposing testimony of no less an authority than Dr. Whately, who, in a remarkable passage,

has told us that "the generality of logical writers, whenever they have to treat of any thing that is beyond the mere elements of Logic, totally lay aside all reference to the principles they have been occupied in establishing and explaining, and have recourse to a loose, vague, and popular kind of language."* Can there be a more complete surrender of the practical value of all that is peculiar in the art? †

The case of the mathematicians, however, is on the whole, perhaps, the most striking.

Although many of the steps in geometrical reasoning (all of them according to the logicians themselves) may be brought under the dictum de omni et nullo, and thus fall within the domain of formal logic, it is notorious that no use of the scholastic rules and distinctions is ever made in this great department of demonstrative science, in which we never hear of undistributed middles, illicit processes, moods and figures, and reduction of syllogisms. Nothing surely can be a stronger external proof of the limited utility, not to say the utter

* Elements of Logic, p. 133., 1st ed. 8vo.

†The following testimony to the want of adaptation in the art to the requirements of intellectual beings is curious. "Experience shows," say the authors of the Port Royal Art of Thinking, "that of a thousand young men who learn logic, there are not ten who remember anything of it six months after having finished their course." - Discourse ii.

It is a remark of D'Alembert's, " que les géometrès, ceux de tous les philosophes qui se sont toujours le moins trompés,

inefficiency, of the technicalities and mechanism of the logical system. It is plain that the highest, the most accurate, the most recondite, as well as the most popular reasoning in the world goes on without their assistance.

SECTION VI.

Subject of Rules continued: Effects of the Scholastic System as a Discipline of the Mind.

FROM the preceding survey of the subject, it is apparent not only that technical rules, by which operations of a mechanical character may be employed to test the validity of arguments, are exceedingly limited in their application, and, when they can be applied, are useless or less useful than rules founded on the matter or signification of the reasoning; but that in argumentative discourse and the prosecution of science they are found to be practically of little or no value.

But this negative condemnation is not all. They are positively evil, not only by all the trouble and perplexity which they needlessly occasion, but in a still higher degree by withdrawing attention from

ont toujours été ceux qui ont fait le moins de syllogismes."Elemens de Philosophie, v. Logique.

"It does not appear," says Dr. Reid, "that Euclid, or Apollonius, or Archimedes, or Huygens, or Newton, ever made the least use of this art; and I am even of opinion that no use can be made of it in mathematics." — Analysis of Aristotle's Logic, chap. iv. section 5.