A Logic of Facts; Or, Every-day Reasoning

The Logic of the Schools, however indispensable in its place, fails to meet half the common want in daily life. The Logic of the Schools begins with the management of the premises of an argument; there is, however, a more practical lesson to be learned in beginning with the premises themselves. A thousand errors arise through the assumption of premises for one arising in the misplacement of terms. The Logic of the Schools is an elaborate attack upon the lesser evil.
Sir James Mackintosh has remarked that 'Popular reason can alone correct popular sophistry'—and it is in vain that we expect amendment in the reasoning of the multitude, unless we make reasoning intelligible to the multitude. As to my object, could I, like Gridiron-Cobbett, adopt a symbol of it, I would have engraved Æsop's 'Old Man and his Ass,' who, in a vain attempt to please everybody, failed (like his disciples—for even he has disciples) to please anybody. The folly of that superfluously philanthropic old gentleman should teach us proportion of purpose. To be of real service; to some is in the compass of individual capacity, and consequently, the true way of serving, if not of pleasing all . The republic of literature, like society, has its aristocratic, its middle, and its lower classes. No one has combined, in one performance, the refinement applauded in the universities, with the practical purpose, popular among those who toil to live, and live to toil. The populace are my choice—of them I am one, and, like a recent premier, Earl Grey, am disposed 'to stand by my order.' I write for this class both from affection and taste. If I can benefit any, I can them. I know their difficulties, for I have encountered them—their wants, for they have been mine. This will account for the liberties taken with the subjects upon which I treat. There is more than one kind of hunger that will break through barriers, and I have taken with an unlicensed hand, wherever it was to be found, what I wanted for myself, and what I know to be wanted by those who stand at the anvil and the loom, and who never had the benefits of scholastic education, and who never will.