Literary Notes.

Modern Logicians.

THE LATE JOHN WOOLLEY, D.C.L., OF OXFORD, PRINCIPAL, AND PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND CLASSICS, IN THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY.

THE Oxford revival of logic which was brought to maturity by the efforts of Newman and Whately in the first quarter of the present century was largely influenced, among other things, by the spirit which resulted, elsewhere, and in the very same year as the late Archbishop Whately's book was separately published (1825), in the institution of "The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." Jeremy Bentham had outgrown his Queen's College teaching, and had thrown into the public mind the idea of "utility as the standard and test of the summum bonum of human life. Christchurch and Oriel, following the example and obeying the precepts of Dr. Edward Bentham, who endeavoured to plead its cause so far as it appeared capable of a reasonable vindication," expressing his wish that "the useful parts of it might be retained and fitted for younger students," gave us George Cornewall Lewis as the critic, and Richard Whately as the originator of "The Logic of the Nineteenth Century." This logic, "divested of the formality and precision of the old school, was "very attractive and engaging, but its author,' in his anxiety to avoid obscurity, sometimes appears to forget the necessity of discipline." Hence, in order that his work may be "read with advantage, he seems to require a previous cultivation of thought seldom to be expected in those who are commencing their logical studies."

"The name of Whately," as Prof. Alexander C. Fraser said, "has for more than thirty years been a household word among students of logic in this and in other countries. It belongs to one who. nearly half-a-century ago, saved the science from academical extinction at Oxford, and who at the same time launched it anew on a course in which it has since become the widely appreciated popular study which in Britain has attracted a large quantity of the highest intellect that has been employed in this generation. Whately's Elements' has been for many years the logical textbook of the time in Britain and America. Logic was long ago the principle study in all the older European universities, until, perverted into a dry art of wrangling and a minister of verbal controversy, it deservedly fell into decay among us in this country. But ever since his vigorous and earnest mind was applied to it, it has been giving signs of returning life in all its branches, with the effect, on the whole, of abating disputes which are merely verbal, 1866.

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of elevating and purifying our habits of discussion and inquiry, and of making us more exact and methodical as well as wise. Logic is at present, in a great measure, in consequence of Whately, more used as an organ and test of a liberal education; and logical discipline is more generally required of candidates for the offices of life, than at any time since the decline of the study in the seventeenth century. This eminent restorer of logical study was in every way one of the most vigorous and versatile men of his time. His success as a logician is indeed due more to certain qualities of his personal character than to his philosophical power of learning. It consists rather in exciting others to cultivate the science and its spirit than in any extension or correction of its doctrines due directly to himself."

"He was one of the celebrated group of really thinking contemporaries in Oriel College about half-a-century ago who have so remarkably moved English opinion in the last and the present generation, and who were themselves moving in very different directions. The society of Oriel, about the time when he was there, included Coplestone and Arnold, Hampden and Newman, and Pusey. These men were united by the subjective bond of a common intellectual activity and moral earnestness, rather than by the objective bond of a common system of notions." "The remarkable men of Oriel, among whom Whately lived, were thinkers or scholars, rather than a school or a sect." 'But the minds of these Oxford men were educated by mutual contagion and controversy, and they sowed the seeds of thought in England, in the generation that followed, of which we are now seeing the harvest."*

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The personal influence of these Oriel men passed away when life's duties called them to the various positions which they were fitted or fated to fill, and though they had in some instances stated their thoughts in books, the men being greater than their books and less capable of being analytically criticized, the potency of their influence decreased in their absence from the great centre of growing thought in which they had once been the chief

powers.

It was characteristic of the strong individuality of [Sir] G. C. Lewis, that in the very presence and in the very hour of the power of "Whately and his famous associates in Oriel," he could issue his "Examination of the Elements of Logic," issued by the Principal of St. Alban's Hall. It was almost to be expected that some adherent of Bentham's philosophy should welcome the practical evidence of the force of his thoughts on Utility which Whately's "Elements" afforded; and probably right that J. S. Mill should be the man. Aldrich, the traditionary expositor of the Aristotelic logic, could scarcely fail of finding supporters, and hence we find several annotated and illustrated editions, mostly anonymous however, of the "Artis Logica Rudimenta" of the versatile Dean of Christchurch, issued shortly after the publication of Whately's

* ( Archbishop Whately and the Restoration of the Study of Logic." A lecture by Professor A. C. Fraser. Macmillan and Co., London.

"Logic." The din of Oxford controversy, when it reached the ears of Sir William Hamilton, quickly put on the alert "that massive man of the bold look and the clear hazel eye," and caused him to fling into the cauldron of controversy the famous article in the Edinburgh Review, 1833, in which he taunts the whole Oxford school with ignorance of a most marked character, and asserts that this "ignorance" proves emphatically, that for a century and a half at least the " Organon (to say nothing of other logical works) could have been as little read in Oxford as the Targum or Zendavesta.

For some time longer, however, the Whatelyan school of logicians held an almost unquestioned supremacy in Oxford; and even penetrated to Cambridge, and extended to Scotland-even still farther, to America. But the logical spirit is a questioning one. It seldom rests in the attained. It thirsts to acquire all that is attainable. Among Oxford-trained questioners, Francis William Newman holds an early place. In his "Lectures on Logic," 1838, he shows his disinclination to accept of Whately's definition of the science, as "an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning' "entirely conversant about language ;" and his assertion that "logic takes no cognizance of induction, for instance, or of à priori reasoning, &c., as distinct forms of argument." This disagreement Newman indicates in his definition, in which he tells us that "the object matter of logic is no particular set of phenomena parallel in character to that which other sciences contemplate, but is proof or evidence as such. And in discussing evidence, the end in view is to investigate the laws of evidence-to lay down when and why it is that we say a thing has been proved; its evidence is good; it is therefore to be believed;" and elsewhere in these words, "I conceive it is a part of logic to inquire both why we believe our senses, and why we believe human testimony." His remarks on induction bear out the same thought. It is not our intention, however, in this paper to supply a record of the controversies on logic, which have been so continuous and, in some instances, so acrimonious during the last half-century. We wish rather to enter upon the historic roll of "modern logicians "the name of one who saw more clearly, and expounded, at an earlier date, more acutely, the true nature of Aristotelic induction, and its relation to the logical inquiries of the present day, than any other author of this age.

We shall not condescend to apologize for the performance of an act of duty. We can afford to admit that the name of Dr. John Woolley has not yet been made famous in review articles or been inserted in the columns of biographical sketches of "men of the time;" and been held as shunted off from British letters by the accidents-I would say the destiny, of life. From this undeserved obscurity his name was rescued for a moment, and written in our British annals by the occurrence of one of the most harrowing and tragic incidents of the sea which has taken place of late in the vicinity of our ocean-girt island-the wreck of the London. Is it

not sad that it should be so-that one who gained an early and substantial reputation at home, and maintained while he extended it abroad, who was known as one of the ripest scholars of this age, and one who held the headship of "the first Colonial university in the British Empire," should be unnoted among those pre-eminent spirits to whom the progress of the race is due ? That it may be so no longer, we shall essay to provide a brief outline of his public life, and such an estimate of his works as shall prove that his is " the few, the immortal names of those "that were not born to die from the world's memory.

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The late John Woolley, D.C.L., Oxford, was the son of George Woolley, M.D., and his wife, Charlotte, daughter of William Gell, Esq., of Lewes, in Sussex. He was born at Petersfield, a markettown and parliamentary borough, in the hundred of Finch Dean, Hampshire, where his father was at the time in medical practice, 28th February, 1816. During his boyhood, George Woolley removed to London, and his son, having been carefully trained both at home and in good schools, entered the then recently established London University as a student in 1830. There, under the care of Professor Thomas H. Key, author of the "crude form" Latin Grammar, &c., he studied the language of Rome. Greek he learned under Professor Malden, an erudite and earnest teacher. In the class of Prof. John Hoppus, an able, judicious, and practical logician, he pursued a course of training in the art of reasoning." » Woolley progressed so satisfactorily as to hold the first place in all these studies, and carried off, with honours, the chief prize in logic. In his seventeenth year he competed for an 'open scholarship" at Exeter College, and gained it readily, There, under the rectorship of John Collier Jones, he passed four years of an active and earnest student career, and took, before he had attained his majority, a first-class degree at the Easter term of 1836, in literis humanioribus, along with Wm. F. Donkin, afterwards Savilian Professor of Astronomy; J. A. Hessey, Bampton Lecturer (on Sunday, its Origin, History, and Present Obligation) for 1860; and four others. In 1837, Mary Anne, Viscountess Sidmouth, founded a Civil Law fellowship in honour of her father, William Scott, Baron Stowell, Judge of the High Court of Admiralty, and brother of Lord Eldon. Lord Stowell, who had been a fellow of University College, died 20th January, 1836, aged ninety-one, and hence that college was selected by Lady Sidmouth for her benefaction. The fellowship was constituted open to all members of the University of Oxford who had passed their examination for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and is tenable for seven years. Notwithstanding the wide competition to which this fellowship was open, John Woolley determined on becoming a candidate, and was, after due competition, unanimously selected to fill the first Stowell University College fellowship. On acquiring this well won honour, he was brought into society of a most genial character. Scholarly and thoughtful men, under the presidency of F. C. Plumptre, D.D., who had entered on his