at its nature, kinds, degrees. It cannot be denied that we know, or believe we know. Even in such a denial there would be an assertion of knowledge. Knowing is a fact or phænomenon of experience. It is the inner fact of our being; it is our being, so far. We are, as we know. Logic, too, looks at this act as fact. So far, it is identical with Psychology. But Logic looks at the fact of knowing with a view to ascertain its conditions, laws, if it have any, how it is carried on, and what it is when it is finished. And Logic professes to find that knowing is subject to certain conditions, and to show that these conditions are of two different kinds at least; and, these being ascertained, to exhibit them in a scientific way, to formulate them, make a body of knowledge of them; and, now indifferent to the actual fact whether knowing is going on or not in this or that matter or science, to show ideally how it must go on, if it is to be successful in its aim, or even to be at all. While Psychology is thus the science of the facts of Intelligence, or of knowing, and also of its actual laws as matter of experience, a science of facts or phænomena of our conscious intelligence, as realities, Logic takes from it the laws which it reveals, the laws of the acquisition, the ordering, classification, and concatenation of knowledge, and represents these as ideal abstractions universally applicable in the processes of intelligence. Logic is thus wholly dependent on Psychology for its principles. It is Psychology carried up to its highest abstraction. And the moment it loses hold of Psychology, Logic becomes arbitrary and unreliable, no longer applicable to the facts of experience. The nominal difference between the two sciences is simply that Psychology regards rather knowing in process, while Logic regards knowing as completed, as a product, and the laws which it has realised or fulfilled in becoming what it is, or in reaching what it attains. § 12. Psychology thus, to a certain extent, and the method. of Psychology, observation of the actual procedure of the understanding, are necessary to the knowledge of the nature and laws of the understanding. The understanding is simply the conscious mind acting and being conscious of its action in a definite manner, and about a definite object. In thus acting it realises the law of its action; it thinks-i.e., conceives, judges, or reasons coherently. Analysis and reflection bring out with a fuller consciousness the law or laws which it naturally observes, and also reveal the necessity and universality of the law. In no sense whatever does this analysis create the law; in no sense whatever does it impose the law on the understanding. The law is revealed in a definite instance, and it is shown by reflection to be supreme in all instances. (a) Kant objects to the introduction of psychological principles into Logic, or drawing the laws of thought from psychological observation. The reason he gives is, that thus we should get only contingent, not necessary laws; and the question is not as to how we think, but as to how we ought to think. The necessary use of the understanding is discovered without any psychology. To this it is sufficient to say that observation, followed by generalisation, would give us only contingent principles; but observation of the actual procedure of the understanding, followed by reflection, or an experimental testing of the procedure, may and does give us the necessary element in the proWe can learn how we ought to think only through an analysis of how we actually think, when we think consistently, i.e., think at all. Indeed, Kant himself subsequently admits all that need be contended for here, when he says "the necessary laws of thought can and ought to be conceived a priori, independently of the natural and concrete exercise of the understanding and the reason, although they can at first be found only by observation of this exercise." On this point, as elsewhere, especially in the Critique, Kant shows that he had no clear idea of the scope of Psychology, of its method, and only slight acquaintance with the details of the science. cess. He further excludes Psychology from Logic on the ground that Logic seeks to know not the contingent but the necessary, not how the understanding thinks, and has thought, but how it ought to think, the accord of the understanding with itself. This assumes that there can be no necessary exercise of the understanding in a given instance, for example, no absolutely necessary implication in a given reasoning performed by the understanding, and consciously known to be necessary; whereas, this necessary relation is given and consciously realised in a single instance of valid reasoning. Kant thus confuses the particular or singular with the contingent. It assumes, further, that the understanding may think in experience in a way different from that in which it must think, if it thinks at all. This is not so. There is only one way of thinking by the understanding, that is, the legitimate way. Any other is a mere illusion, not a reality of thought at all. And there is no reason why the understanding may not naturally perform its process of thinking rightly rather than wrongly. (b) One of the current Hegelian assertions, which is regarded as new and important, is that "the knowledge of what knows cannot precede the knowledge of reality." No one, I should think, ever alleged, or at least required to allege, the converse of this. The knowledge of what knows is and can only be found in the knowledge of reality. We perceive, judge, and reason; we get at, or think we get at, reality in our intuitions and judgments. But the philosopher says we get at more, we get at a knowledge of what knows, if only we will think of what a knowledge of reality is and means. For therein are manifested the character and law of the knower as well. And if we are ever to know the nature of the knower or knowing subject, we are to do it by a reflection on the spontaneous acts of knowledge,—which are conversant directly with the reality, and reflexly show the reality in consciousness. But for this secondary or reflective knowledge, we should be wholly unable to estimate the value and reach of our knowing, and only through this could we correct, if need be, our spontaneous or intuitive knowledge. 9 CHAPTER II. HISTORICAL NOTICES-ARISTOTLE-HIS VIEW OF LOGIC. § 13. The ultimate aim of Aristotle in his logical treatises, especially those on the more advanced parts of the science,the Prior and Posterior Analytics, is to show the nature and laws of true Demonstration (áródeiέis). In the opening of the Prior Analytics (1. i. c. 1) he tells us that the treatise concerns demonstration, and is undertaken for the sake of demonstrative science, and that consequently he has to define proposition, term, and syllogism. This affords a certain ground for a division of the parts of Logic, and the arrangement of the Aristotelic treatises. (1) The theory of the elements of the proposition, that is, the term, given in the Categories. (2) That of the proposition in the treatise On Interpretation. (3) That of the syllogism in the Prior Analytics. (4) That of demonstration in the Posterior Analytics. These may be regarded as exhausting the essential parts of Logic, and as constituting Theoretical or Pure Logic. The Topics and the Sophistical Elenchi may be taken as in Applied Logic. In the Analytics and in the Topics, Aristotle treats of definition and demonstration. But in the former he seeks to give the theory of true definition, and how it is to be constructed; in the latter, what sort of definition can be impugned. In the Analytics, demonstration is the best, which is according to the true principles of its theory; in the Topics, that demonstration is to be preferred which is the more difficult to assail. There is the difference in fact between the scientific theory of truth, and the dialectical interest of the appearance of truth and intellectual victory.1 1 Cf. Waitz, An. Post., ii. 297. § 14. Aristotle tells us that he is to treat of syllogism previously to demonstration, since syllogism is more universal, -demonstration being a certain kind of syllogism. The differentia of demonstration is, that it is a syllogism from necessary matter. "If there be a demonstration that a thing cannot subsist otherwise, the (demonstrative) syllogism must be from necessary (propositions). For it is possible, without demonstration, to syllogise from what are true, but we cannot do so from things necessary except by demonstration, for this is now (the essence) of demonstration. . . . It is possible to syllogise the necessary from things not necessary, just as we may the true from things not true; still when the medium is from necessity, the conclusion is also of necessity, as the true results from the true always."1 In the Posterior Analytics he expressly expounds the theory of demonstration, with a view to show the use of syllogistic in the constitution of true and certain science, the science of necessary principles and its consequences, including the question of their guarantee. Επιστήμη ἀποδεικτική has thus been translated the theory of knowledge, and regarded as part of Philosophy. On these grounds, it is held by St Hilaire and others that Aristotle viewed demonstration as the proper object of the books of the Organon, and of the science afterwards named Logic.2 § 15. The principles of science (apxaí), according to Aristotle, are κοιναί and ἴδιαι: under the former are, ἀξιώματα, the original premises from which demonstration proceeds; under the latter, assumptions, éves,—that is, definitions, opɩσμoí, and hypotheses (voléσes), assumptions of the existence of the subjects.3 § 16. The difference between a demonstrative and a dialectical proposition is, that the former is assumed by the demonstrator, the latter is accepted from another person. So far, however, as syllogising from either proposition is concerned, this difference, as Aristotle admits, is of no moment. All that the syllogism supposes is, that something is or is not present with something. We do not need to inquire why one thing is predicated of another; all that we require is that it be predicated. A syllogistic proposition (póτασɩs) is an 1 Post. An., i. 6. 2 Cf. St Hilaire, Organon, art. Logique, Dictionnaire de S. P. |