"Our a remarkable activity in their writers' minds, as well as their anxiety to discover and point out the reasonably true. While questions of lasting interest, "of great pith and moment," have been considered in full and well-conducted discussions, the interests of the day have been briefly, yet appositely, treated in the "Topic.” Not a few "Essays" of popular worth and intrinsic merit have graced our pages, and the "Society's Section" has noted the doings of some associations for mutual improvement, as well as indicated the friendliness of the Conductors towards every effort for the genial culture of the mind. This sympathy has, in the present volume, been more fully displayed in the institution of Collegiate Course," to the studies in which we would direct our readers' attention, in perfect reliance on their favourable judgment. To the studious and inquisitive, the leading papers on the chief thinkers, actors, and events in the world's history, which flow with such condensed fulness, yet readable fluency, from Mr. Neil's pen, continue their course satisfactorily, winning from press and public the praise due to them. The "Reviewer" has been somewhat extended in scope and range; the "Poetic Section" contains some vital thoughts, expressed in words of grace; the "Inquirer" and the "Literary Notes "-along with the other departments of the magazine-have been enlarged and improved, and thus the additional space gained by the recent increase in our pages has been used as profitably for our readers as has yet been possible. Farther efforts will not be spared to effect judicious improvements, as opportunity arises or suggestions reach us. The present Volume we lay before our readers with full faith in their approval. To subscribers and contributors alike the memory of our hearts keeps record of our thankfulness. To the results of the past we look with the fondness which a loved labour claims; to those of the future with the earnestness of hope-a hope that the efforts made hereafter may excel in usefulness and value those to which we now affix an-Imprimantur. THE BRITISH CONTROVERSIALIST. Modern Logicians. THE RIGHT HON. AND MOST REV. RICHARD LORD ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN, ETC., ETC. LOGIC, if it be regarded as the science and art of investigating truth, has a very wide province of human thought under its legislative control. The whole area of pure mathematics, and a large proportion of the fields over which those sciences in which mathematical truths are applied, or employed, range and operate, e. g., astronomy, optics, mechanics, &c., are subject to it. The vast tracts of thought to which we attach the names of morals, politics, pyschology, &c., come in a great measure under its sway. The construction and administration of law, the formalization and application of theology, the determination and use of criticism, the possibility and utility of grammar, and the fitting employment of language as an instrument of thought, depend very much upon the accuracy of the logical tenets adopted in the several operations required to effect them. Even chemistry and physiology, the sciences concerned with heat and light, and the tasteful products of sculpture, painting, and poetry, are not exempt from its overmastering activity. In all of these so far as they are the results of the exertion of human intellection-the testing and the attestation as well as the investigation of truth are necessary; and the science by which these processes are controlled, directed, and properly conducted, is that to which the name of Logic is commonly given. On the banks of the Isis, Logic has had for centuries the reputation of having been more carefully and elaborately studied than by the margin of the Cam. Though dubious quotations regarding an earlier date might be made, it is now admitted, as certain, that Oxford "became, in the thirteenth century, second only to Paris in the multitude of its students and the celebrity of its scholastic disputations. England indeed, and especially through Oxford, could 1862. B show more names of the first class in this line than any other country.' "What university, I pray," says Antony Wood, can produce an invincible Hales, an admirable [Roger] Bacon, an excellent well-grounded Middleton, a subtle Scotus, an approved Burley, a resolute Baconthorpe, a singular Ockham, a solid and industrious Holcot, and a profound Bradwardin!" all which persons flourished within the compass of one century. Those are names indeed well nigh forgotten in these days, particularly in this country, from the darkness which the Reformation of philosophy and religion has spread over their volumes, but by no means meriting that oblivion into which they have fallen. Hooker, indeed, has honoured Scotus [who prelected at Oxford on the Sentences' of Peter Lombard, 1301-1307] with the appellation of the wittiest' (in the sense of wisest) of the school divines.' But Ockham, especially, ought never to be forgotten among those who prepared the way for the improved science of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as having inculcated by his logical theory the unjustly [?] vilified doctrine of the Nominalist, and so far led men from that exclusive devotion to mere abstractions, which scholasticism had taught, to look also to experience for information and science." It may be true, as the able author just quoted-according to Sir William Hamilton, "the only Englishman, past or present, since the revival of letters, who has penetrated far into the wilderness of scholasticism,"-asserts that"in them and in the latter schoolmen, generally, down to the period of the Reformation, there is more of the parade of logic, a more formal enumeration of arguments, a more burthensome importunity of syllogizing, with less of the philosophical power of arrangement and distribution of the subject discussed;" and that, though they have displayed a wonderful practical acuteness as logicians, they have by no means excelled as scientific expositors of logical truth:" yet this does not invalidate the assertion just made, that Logic has at least nominally formed a more prominent feature in Oxonian study than in the curriculum of the sister University. So patent indeed was this the case, so larded and interlarded were the speech and writings of the scholars of Oxford with the idioms, technicalities, and verbal subtleties of scholasticism, that an Oxonian manner of speaking (Oxoniensis loquendi mos) became a bye-word and a proverb for being skilled in quibbles, sophisms, and the artificialities of argumentation. Nor could this very well have happened otherwise then, for Logic was chiefly studied as a polemic art, and not as a means of eliciting the greatest possible amount of intellectual power stirred by the intensest love 66 *Hallam's "Literature of Europe," vol. i. p. 16. Wood's "Athenæ Oxoniensis," vol. i. p. 159, quoted in Hallam's "Literature of Europe," ut supra. Rev. Renn Dickson Hampden, D.D., Bishop of Hereford, "On the Scholastic Philosophy," par. 22nd, in The Encyclopedia Metropolitana. 66 of truth. In those days is it never done in these ?-the reasoner had his conclusions given him, and he was strictly enjoined beforehand that he was expected, and morally bound to arrive at them by some plausible logical process. Hence we find that portion of the Organon of Aristotle, which was most applicable to this purpose, principally, or rather exclusively studied;" and "to state the truth indeed, Aristotle himself-though the name of Aristotle was in the mouths of all the reasoners of the Middle Ages, as that of the great master of their art-was absolutely unknown to them. Abstracts drawn from translations and comments of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries had surperseded the originals, even on the narrow ground to which logical science had been reduced."* During the fifteenth century from various causes the condition of learning fell very low, and for the betterment of logical science, Henry VIII. ordained that, instead of Scotus (1265-1308), the posthumously published, "De Dialectica Inventione," of Rudolphus Agricola (1442-1485)-one of the restorers of science and letters in Europe-should be used; and Wolsey, who had been himself a student, a fellow, and a tutor of Magdalen College, revised the statutes of the University, and instituted (1532) Christ Church College,-" one of the first seminaries," says Wharton, "of an English university that professed to explode the pedantries of the old barbarous philosophy, and to cultivate the graces of polite literature." About this time in both Universities the stir of change was felt, and Aristotle and Plato began both to be read-shall we say studied? We dare scarcely venture to say so when we remember the opinion of philosophy, which Bacon (1579) carried away from Cambridge, as so much spider-thread spun out of the brains of scholastics, wonderful for its fineness, but without use or purpose in nature. This eminent thinker did not a little to destroy the reverence for antiquity, which chiefly inclined men to regard Plato and Aristotle, with their commentators, as the hierophants and prophets of an invulnerable philosophy, and his writings tended not a little to disturb and distract the minds of the logical students of his day. His Novum Organum, published in 1620, attracted much attention; and in 1623 he was hailed even in Oxford as a mighty Hercules" in the advancement of philosophy and learning; and in 1629, Edward Sandys, then Professor of Dialectics, mingled in his lectures a good deal of the admonitory cautions of Bacon with the acute distinctions of Ockham, and the syllogistic safeguards of Aristotle. As if in view of this very influence, the fourth of the "Statutes of Oxford" given (1636) by Archbishop Laud, ordains that, the lecturer in Logic is on Mondays and Thursdays, at eight o'clock, a. m., publicly to expound either the introduction of Porphyry, or some part of Aristotle's Logic, by clearly and tersely explaining the text; and he is not to dwell long 66 *Bishop Hampden's "Scholasticism," ut supra. on questions about the method or analysis of the book or text, but in the usual way, to raise questions pertinent to the subject of the book, and to resolve them with brevity and force." During this period, Edward Brerewood, an eminent mathematician, published his "Elementa Logica," 1614; Richard Crackanthorpe his elaborate "Logica," in 1622; M. S. Smiglecius produced his learned treatise in 1638; and the celebrated casuist, Bishop Sanderson's "Logica" was issued about 1647. In 1662, an able and brief abstract of the Aristotelic logic, originally prepared by a Jesuit named Du Trieu, for the use of the alumni of Douay College, was printed at Oxford, and seems to have been studied by some of the thinkers of that time. These various works, containing many acute and valuable teachings, were, however, speedily superseded by Wallis's "Institutio Logicæ ad Communes Usus Accommodata," in 1687. We are not in a position to affirm, with Sir William Hamilton, that "the original treatises of Aristotle were now found to transcend the college complement of erudition and intellect," but we do know that a quick deterioration in the works employed in logical studies took place after this time. Perhaps this may have been the result of the contempt thrown upon logic in Locke's "Essay," published in 1690. At any rate, next year, 1691, the clear and concise work of Aldrich, Compendium Artis Logica," appeared, and remained for some time the standard work at, though, unfortunately, not the standard of attainment in Oxford. In a few years an abridgment of this book was made, which bears the title of "Rudimenta Artis Logica;" and this meagre skeleton of technicalism constituted the Oxonian's text-book for nearly half a century. 66 Writing about 1760, Dr. Edward Bentham, Regius Professor of Divinity, and Fellow of Oriel College, in which he had been a tutor, says: "Logical studies, it is well known, have been long upon the decline," and he states that he had "endeavoured to plead its cause, so far as it appeared capable of a reasonable vindication." This he had done in "Reflections upon Logic," a work, shallow, it is_true, but worth reading once; and by the composition of an "Introduction to Logic, Scholastic and Rational,”—a book in which there are several good observations and examples. It was Bentham's custom, as tutor, "to initiate his pupils in all parts of philosophy by the help of an English introduction, adding thereto, in course, the Latin definitions and principal questions, with their explication ;" and as he was pretty well read in logical works, he seems to have been successful, for a time, in rescuing the Art of Reasoning from "neglect and contempt." In 1789, the delivery of Dr. Edward Tatham's Bampton Lecture, published in 1790-1792, with the title "The Chart and Scale of Truth," seemed to give hope that the race of logical thinkers was not extinct in Oxford. But the hope was baseless; the still downward tendency_continued, and in 1793, an anonymous "Familiar Commentary on Logic" was issued. Then, though in 1802, some Excerpta ex Aristotelis Organon” 66 |