Elementary Logic

Abstract

AN excellent manual, combining an adequate account of the old logic with a good exposition of modern developments. As becomes a logician, Mr. Sidgwick divides his hook into parts and smaller sections, with admirable system and sequence. Part i. deals with the syllogism in all its forms, also with induction and fallacies, in which matters the author follows Mill for the most part. Interesting illustrations are chosen, and the treatment renders the text as readable as circumstances allow. It is admittedly impossible to make “Barbara” and her associates look anything but dull, however they are dressed up; but logic (as Browning said of his own poetry) is “not a substitute for dominoes”, so the student will no doubt struggle through. Mr. Sidgwick gets the dull part disposed of as quickly as thoroughness will allow. In Part ii. we reach the more interesting and “live” part. The modern point of view is adopted, and formal logic is shown to establish only validity and not truth, because there is always something assumed. Further, classes are man-made, not nature-made; and, as we cannot say all that can be said about S, S may be in one class in certain of its relations, and in another when others of its aspects are being considered. Briefly, truth is relative to purpose. And proof is never coercive. The new logical method is modest. It looks forward with confidence, however, to a “great increase in the effectiveness of an appeal to facts against the verbalism which springs from uncritical acceptance of the abstract laws of thought”.

Elementary Logic.

By A. Sidgwick. Pp. x + 250. (Cambridge University Press, 1914.) Price 3s. 6d. net.