LOGIC. Since the Penny Cyclopedia' was completed, the study of logic in this country has undergone three itnportant changes. First, much more attention is paid to the subject : secondly, innovations have been listened to In a spirit which seems to admit that Kant's dictum about the perfection of the Aristotelian lo.cio may possibly be false : thirdly, a disposition has arisen to distinguish logic from meta physics and psychology, without losing sight of the psychological and metaphysical discussion which is necessary to a sound view of the meaning, province, and first principles of the science. In such a state of transition the best thing to be done is to allow the main logical articles of the ' Penny Cyeloptedia' to stand unaltered, as representatives of a starting point, and to devote the present article chiefly to seine account of recent developments and current disputes. We therefore refer to Ones.ttox, Smootsu, &c., as preparatory to the present article.
We also explain that we are not writing for (nor against) the competent disputant, but for the learner who has mastered the common elements that we refer to England (meaning the three kingdoms) and English thought only ; and that we treat of that part of logic which may be styled an exact science, without any discussion of the grounds on which its obvious postulates are founded.
The changes to which we have alluded arise from that revival of the taste for philosophy which has commenced and is continuing, both in England and France. So far as England is concerned this revival was preceded by the publication of Dr. Whately's work, the first gdition of which was an article in the Encyclopndia Metropolitana (about 1826). The author had for years taught the subject at Oxford, and had trained some, at least, to see the low state into which logic had fallen ; a state not exaggerated in the unfriendly criticism presently mentioned. This work placed logic, in a comparatively attractive form, within the reach of many out of Oxford, to whom all the attain able books had been sealed by the stamp of a current prejudice; and it had merits of its own. The Archbishop of Dublin possesses the talent which distinguished Paley from his predecessors; the talent of rendering a dry subject attractive in a sound form by style, illustra tion, and clearness combined. And to him is due the title of the restorer of logical study in England.
In 1836, ten years after the publication of Dr. Whately's work, Sir William Hamilton [Moo. Div.] was appointed professor of logic and metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. The extraordinary cha racter of his learning is not overrated iu the article cited. But it should be added, as necessary to be known by any one who enters on the logical controversies of the day, that his strange hatred of the mathematical sciences was owing to an unusual inaptitude for them, which prevented, probably any sufficient study, certainly any real understanding, even of their lowest branches. In 1829, be commenced that powerful series of articles in the ' Edinburgh Review' by which his reputation was first established out of Edinburgh : these were re published with some additional notes, under the title of ' Discussions in Philosophy ;' and no higher logical student can dispense with them. In 1833 appeared the celebrated criticism on Dr. NVhately's Logic, of which the first thing to be said is that it is due to Dr. Whately himself that it had an audience to listen to it : its history, philosophy, and philology, would have fallen dead upon the previous generation. Accordingly this criticism, though most valuable as a logical disserta tion, and of a necessity to be read which does not lessen with time, is nothing as a criticism ; for it neither is nor proceeds upon a true view of the place and office of the work criticised. Nevertheless, it was one of the stimulants of the revival.
The meaning of the word to has undergone much variation in different hands. It has been what the writer pleases, from the whole of the inquiry into truth and falsehood down to the investigation of the Aristotelian syllogism. This diversity of signification is probably near its end. There is a growing disposition to admit Kant's defini tion, which describes it as the science of the necessary laws of thought : it is said to treat of the form of thought independently of its matter. Though neither Aristotle nor his followers confine themselves within this definition, nor even so much as distinctly conceive it, all will ac knowledge that the definition singles out the most important distinctive feature of their system. A few words on the relation of form and matter will be requisite.