A GRAMMAR OF LOGIC AND INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY, ON DIDACTIC PRINCIPLES; FOR THE USE OF COLLEGES, SCHOOLS, AND PRIVATE INSTRUCTION. BY ALEXANDER JAMIESON, AUTHOR OF A TREATISE ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF MAPS, A GRAMMAR OF RHETORIC OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE, &c. &c. Understanding is a well-spring of life to him that hath it. Prov. xvi. 22. Sixth Edition, Stereotyped. NEW HAVEN: PUBLISHED BY A. H. MALTBY. AND SOLD BY HILLIARD, GRAY, & CO., BOSTON; B. & S. COLLINS, ROBINSON, 1837. INTRODUCTION. GRAMMAR, LOGIC, and RHETORIC are the handmaids of LITERATURE, SCIENCE and PHILOSOPHY. The study of grammar is the study of LANGUAGE, and MEMORY is the faculty which it chiefly employs and exercises. But in proceeding towards the cultivation of TASTE and GENIUS, the acquisition of SCIENCE, and other ulterior objects of education, the faculties most susceptible of improvement and refinement are the IMAGINATION and the UNDERSTANDING. POLITE LITERATURE is addressed to the IMAGINATION and the UNDERSTANDING in conjunction; SCIENCE is addressed to the UNDERSTANDING alone. With the view, therefore, of conducting youth from the mere exercise of memory, in the study of language, towards investigations on the powers of the understanding, in the regions of science, my GRAMMAR of RHETORIC and POLITE LITERATURE professes, by a proper gradation, to occupy the mind, for some time, in those agreeable prospects exhibited to the imagination, and in those interesting speculations, also, addressed to the understanding, with which the arts of speaking and writing so amply abound. But the most successful initiation and discipline into the researches of philosophy, are disquisitions about the objects with which we are familiar, and inquiries into the operations of the human mind, which we every day experience. And LOGIC has been justly styled the history of the human mind, inasmuch as it traces the progress of our knowledge, from our first and simple perceptions, through all their different combinations, and all those numerous deductions, that result from variously comparing them one with another. For it is thus, only, that we are let into the frame and contexture of our own minds,-that we learn in what manner we ought to conduct our thoughts, in order to arrive at truth, and avoid error,-that we see how to build one discovery upon another, and, by preserving the chain of reasoning uniform and unbroken, to pursue the relations of things through all their labyrinths and windings, and at length exhibit them to the view of the soul with all the advantages of light and conviction. 414088 I, therefore, trust that this GRAMMAR OF LOGIC AND INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY will be found adequate to initiate youth in that history, and to resolve such inquiries respecting the operations of their own minds, as they daily experience. The plan of the volume is briefly as follows: The FIRST BOOK is devoted exclusively to the Definition of terms-Preliminary explanations - Enumeration of principles which are taken for granted-Inquiries into the nature and value of hypotheses-The doctrine of analogy — The proper means of knowing the operations of our own minds-The difficulty of attending to these operations, with observations which may assist us in overcoming this difficulty, — and, finally, A comprehensive division of the powers of the human mind. The SECOND Вook embraces Elements of Intellectual Philosophy, calculated to instruct youth in a knowledge of those principles to which the development of the mental faculties may be traced, and upon which we rest all our knowledge of legitimate logic. These elements comprise analyses of the faculties, Consciousness-Sensation - Perception-Attention -Conception — Abstraction-Association - Memory - Imagination — Judgment Reason-Moral Perception. The THIRD BOOK treats on Subjects of collateral_Inquiry with the Intellectual Powers, - such, for example, as the Primary and Secondary qualities of bodies-Natural language and signs — Matter and Space - Duration, Extension, and Number — Identity — The train of thought in the Mind- and Prejudices. The FOURTH BOOK-The Grammar of Logic-unfolds the doctrines of Ideas - Propositions-Sophisms-Reasoning and Syllogism. The FIFTH BOOK concludes the volume, with a brief sketch of The Philosophy of Human Knowledge, as it is addressed to the MEMORY, the UNDERSTANDING, and the IMAGINATION. The foregoing arrangement was dictated by motives which the following observations pretend to explain. In a work that treats of Logic and Intellectual Philosophy, and where selection is so imperiously required, there must be an equal necessity that certain fixed and intelligible principles should be preëstablished. Nor, in handling subjects that have been controverted, and which, from their very nature, are ever liable to discussion, is there any thing of more consequence than agreement, at the outset, about the language we use; for, when, in philosophical disquisitions, we are once agreed respecting the signification of the words and terms we employ, it is unlikely that we shall differ about their application, provided we continue to use them in the sense which we had already affixed to them: hence the position and division of Book First. A knowledge of the powers of the human mind, and of the science of Intellectual Philosophy, furnishes the proper basis upon which every other science is grounded, because the human faculties are the instruments by which alone invention in all the sciences can be accomplished. The examination and analysis of these faculties reciprocally open sources of intellectual improvement, and exercise the student in habits of thinking, judging, reasoning, and communication, upon which depend, not merely the study of logic, and the further prosecution of science, but almost entirely the active business of life. Nor does it appear to me that any other process could, with equal certainty of success, be adopted, by which the mind of youth, launching into a new and pleasing field of speculation, might be enabled to form an estimate of its own powers, of the acquisitions it has made, of the habits it has formed, and of the further improvements of which it is susceptible. For, when the student has acquired those habits of attention, and that capacity of observation, which the study of his intellectual powers must necessarily give him, it is then, and not till then, I have no hesitation in affirming, that he is qualified to enter upon a philosophical, but popular course of LOGIC. Besides, as the progress of the intellectual powers is not prematurely quickened, an acquaintance with the phenomena of the human mind, arranged so as to enable us to profit by our personal experience, cannot be a subject of abstract speculation, but must be the channel through which we advance to the highest endowments of the understanding. But the professed object of Logic is to teach us the RIGHT USE OF REASON, both in the investigation and in the communication of TRUTH. I have already pointed out the relation in which I conceive RHETORIC to stand to GRAMMAR and LOGIC, and, without arrogating pretensions to superior discernment, which would only lay me open to the suspicion of a particular prejudice, I do not see how it is possible to conduct ingenuous youth upwards from the correctness of their taste to the cultivation of their understanding, but by previously explaining to them the faculties of the mind, and their various operations with which we are immediately or remotely conversant, the circumstances favorable or unfavorable to the development of those faculties, and the means by which their improvement may be most successfully undertaken. In the execution of this task, I was also laid under an imperious necessity of banishing from my work all the trifling subtilties of the ancient Logicians, all the logomachy of the schools, all the puzzling distinctions which perplex us in most of the popular treatises of our modern philosophers. But I do not thence lay claim to any new discoveries either in the science of mind, or in the art of Logic. It has been with me a principle of paramount importance, to endeavor to select the most unexceptionable materials from the most approved works of my predecessors or contemporaries, A * |