language. Logic abhors an ellipsis. When an ellipsis is presented to logic, logic demands whether the ellipsis is an ellipsis of thought, or of language merely; whether there is, in point of fact, an uncertainty in thought which language has faithfully expressed; or whether the thought is simple, sure, clear, and language has introduced the ellipsis as an idiom merely. If the thought is uncertain, logic applies itself to deal with the ellipsis, which is the faithful exponent of that thought; but it may oblige language to eliminate the ellipsis for the sake of clearness and precision. If however the ellipsis is one of language merely, the thought being explicit, logic will not deal with the ellipsis at all, but will demand, as the prerequisite of its action, that the ellipsis should be eliminated, and the implicit thought should be rendered explicit in language. In all cases logic deals with what is thought, and with that only.

Logic does not concern itself with any existing real objects, nor with the content or matter contained in any term or proposition.

As language deals with the representation of thoughts with a view to the communication of them from one thinker to another, philosophy regards only the matter, the content of those thoughts, and the evolution of practical truth. Now logic being the instrument that enables philosophy to deal with language, it is an intrusion for logic to pretend to deal with the matter or content of thoughts. Philosophy requires logic to furnish the

formal organon for the investigation of practical truth, i. e. the determination of facts. In all cases then, logic deals with the form of what is thought, with concepts, and their relation in judgment and inference.

A term may refer to an actually existing thing, or to a class under which several objects are subsumed.

But logic has nothing to do with the concrete object, that is, the object considered in itself, but solely with the concept of which the term is the sign.

So also a proposition may be true or false, or it may express a contingent truth or an apodictic truth (an universal and necessary truth).

But logic has nothing to do with these things, it is concerned only with the form of the proposition.

Accordingly the only fallacies of reasoning that logic can take cognizance of, are departures from the formal laws of the syllogism; all other fallacies belong to physics or to metaphysics.

So also logic has nothing to do with the advisability of suppressing a premiss, or otherwise accommodating an argument to the habits of thought of men in general. Such matters belong exclusively to rhetoric.

From the above remarks, it is plain that neither the doctrine of Modals, nor any exposition of Enthymemes or Sorites, ought to find place in a treatise on logic.

PART I.

OF TERMS.

HAD man no power of classifying in intellect the confused multitude of objects presented to the senses, he must remain for ever destitute of anything worthy of the name of knowledge. With no clear recognition, even of the individual, since comparison and discrimination would be impossible, he must for ever abide amidst the obscurity and vagueness in which knowledge commenceshelpless amidst a multiplicity of objects which he could not comprehend—bewildered by a confusion which there would be no possibility of recalling to order. The earliest effort of the mind is accordingly directed to extricate itself from this confusion, and this determines the exercise of the comparative faculty, and the formation of concepts (BAYNES).

Amidst the multitude of confused objects presented to the mind in perception (apprehension),

some are found to affect us similarly in certain respects. These objects the mind considers; by comparison it recognises their resembling qualities; by attention these qualities are exclusively considered, since the concentration of the mind on them involves of necessity its abstraction from those in which they are severally dissimilar. Since the resembling attributes which these various objects possess in common cannot, when separately considered, be discriminated, the objects themselves are, in this restricted point of view, necessarily considered as one. In other words, the understanding grasps into unity a multitude of objects (severally distinct) by a common feature of identity. On this unity thus formed it sets the seal of a name, that it may be enabled ever afterwards at once to discriminate the various objects of its knowledge, and commodiously to refer each to its own class, and thus be saved the endless labour of enumerating all the particulars by which objects are individually discriminated. A notion is thus a purely ideal or subjective whole which the mind, from the limitation of its power, is necessitated to form in order to classify in thought, and discriminate in language, the various objects of its knowledge (BAYNES).

This being the case it is obvious that a concept can afford only a partial knowledge, and has only a relative existence. It can only afford a partial knowledge, since it embraces some only of the

many marks by which an object is known. It has only a relative existence, since this knowledge is not given absolutely, but only in connection with some one of the objects to which the concept is related. (For a notion though potentially applicable to all the objects which it contains, can only be truly known on occasion of its being actually applied to some one of these objects. This is at once the test and the evidence of its relative character: and this being its character, it is obviously altogether dependent on the objects from which it is formed). A concept has thus in its totality a purely subjective existence destitute of any objective reality. Being what it is, namely, an ideal whole, subsisting only by relation to the objects whose resembling parts it embraces, it is obvious that, as it has no independent existence, it can convey to us no independent knowledge; and that if we destroy the objects, we destroy the resembling attributes in each; and destroying the resembling parts we annihilate the whole which they together constituted (namely, the concept). As however a concept has only a subjective being, existence and knowledge are here identity. If no qualities be discriminated in objects as similar, we have no knowledge of a concept, that is, no concept exists. If we cannot assign an object to any class, that is, cannot say that it does or does not belong to any concept, we do not understand We think an object, that is,

or comprehend it.