ΤΟ RIGHT REVEREND EDWARD COPLESTON, D.D. LORD BISHOP OF LLANDAFF, &c. &c. MY DEAR LORD, To enumerate the advantages I have derived from your instructions, both in regular lectures and in private conversation, would be needless to those acquainted with the parties, and to the Public, uninteresting. My object at present is simply to acknowledge how greatly I am indebted to you in respect of the present Work; not merely as having originally imparted to me the principles of the Science, but also as having contributed remarks, explanations, and illustrations, relative to the most important points, to so great an amount that I can hardly consider myself as the Author of more than half of such portions of the treatise as are not borrowed from former publications. I could have wished, indeed, to acknowledge this more explicitly, by marking with some note of distinction those parts which are least my own. But I found it could not be done. In most instances there is something belonging to each of us; and even in those parts where your share is the largest, it would not be fair that you should be made responsible for anything that is not entirely your own. Nor is it possible, in the case of a Science, to remember distinctly how far one has been, in each instance, indebted to the suggestions of another. Information, as to matters of fact, may easily be referred in the mind to the person from whom we have derived it: but scientific truths, when thoroughly embraced, become much more a part of the mind, as it were; since they rest, not on the authority of the instructor, but on reasoning from data, which we ourselves furnish ;1 they are scions engrafted on the stems previously rooted in our own soil and we are apt to confound them with its indigenous productions. 1 See B. IV. Ch. II. § 1. ; You yourself also, I have reason to believe, have forgotten the greater part of the assistance you have afforded in the course of conversations on the subject; as I have found, more than once, that ideas which I distinctly remembered to have received from you, have not been recognized by you when read or repeated. As far, however, as I can recollect, though there is no part of the following pages in which I have not, more or less, received valuable suggestions from you, I believe you have contributed less to the Analytical Outline, and to the Treatise on Fallacies, and more, to the subjoined Dissertation, than to the rest of the Work. I take this opportunity of publicly declaring, that as, on the one hand, you are not responsible for any thing contained in this Work, so, on the other hand, should you ever favour the world with a publication of your own on the subject, the coincidence which will doubtless be found in it with many things here brought forward as my own, is not to be regarded as any indication of plagiarism, at least on your side. Believe me to be, My dear Lord, Your obliged and affectionate Pupil and Friend, RICHARD WHATELY. PREFACE. THE following Treatise contains the substance of the Article "LOGIC" in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana. It was suggested to me that a separate publication of it might prove acceptable, not only to some who are not subscribers to that work, but also to several who are; but who, for convenience of reference, would prefer a more portable volume. In fact a number of individuals had actually formed a design (prevented only by this publication) of joining together to have the article reprinted for their own private use. I accordingly revised it, and made such additions, chiefly in the form of Notes, as I thought likely to increase its utility. When applied to to contribute the Article, I asked and obtained permission from Dr. Copleston (now Bishop of Llandaff) to make use of manuscripts compiled in great measure from what I had heard from him in conversations on the subject, or which he had read to me from his common-place book, interspersed with observations of my own. These manuscripts I had drawn up and was in the habit of employing, for the use of my own pupils. In throwing them into a form suitable for the Encyclopædia, and in subsequently enlarging the Article into the present volume, I have taken without scruple whatever appeared most valuable from the works of former writers; especially the concise, but in general accurate, treatise of Aldrich. But while I acknowledge my obligations to my predecessors, of whose labours I have largely availed myself, I do not prefess to be altogether satisfied with any of the treatises that have yet appeared; nor have I accordingly judged it any unreasonable presumption to point out what seem to me the errors they contain. Indeed, whatever deference an Author may profess for the authority of those who have preceded him, the very circumstance of his publishing a work on the same subject, proves that he thinks theirs open to improvement. In censuring, however, as I have had occasion to do, several of the doctrines and explanations of logical writers, and of Aldrich in particular, I wish it to be understood that this is not from my having formed a low estimate of the merits of the Compendium drawn up by the Author just mentioned, but, B on the contrary, from its popularity, (it being the one commonly used at Oxford) from the impossibility of noticing particularly all the points a which we agree, and from the consideration that errors are the more carefully to be pointed out in proportion to the authority by which they are sanctioned. I have to acknowledge assistance received from several friends who have at various times suggested remarks and alterations. But I cannot avoid particularizing the Rev. J. Newman, Fellow of Oriel College, who actuaily composed a considerable portion of the work as it now stands, from manuscripts not designed for publication, and who is the original author of several pages. Some valuable illustrations of the importance of attending to the ambiguity of the terms used in Political Economy, were furnished by the kindness of my friend and former pupil, Mr. Senior, of Magdalen College, and now Master in Chancery, who preceded me in the office of Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, and afterwards was appointed to the same at King's College, London. They are printed in the Appendix. But the friend to whom it is inscribed has contributed Far more, and that, in the most important parts, than all others together; so much, indeed, that, though there is in the treatise nothing of his which has not undergone such expansion or modification as leaves me solely responsible for the whole, there is not a little of which I cannot fairly claim to be the Author. Each successive edition has been revised with the utmost care. But though the work has undergone not only the close examination of myself nd several friends, but the severer scrutiny of determined opponents, I am happy to find that no material errors have been detected, nor any considerable alterations found necessary. On the utility of Logic many writers have said much in which I cannot coincide, and which has tended to bring the study into unmerited disrepute. By representing Logic as furnishing the sole instrument for the discovery of truth in all subjects, and as teaching the use of the intellectual faculties in general, they raised expectations which could not be realised, and which naturally led to a re-action. The whole system, whose unfounded pretensions had been thus blazoned forth, came to be commonly regarded as utterly futile and empty: like several of our most valuable medicines, which, when first introduced, were proclaimed, each, as a panacea, infallible in the most opposite disorders; and which consequently, in many instances, fell for a time into total disuse; though, after a long interval, they were established in their just estimation, and employed conformably to their real properties. |