A Logic of Facts; Or, Every-day Reasoning

by George Jacob Holyoake

Since general rules are the only, rules that the vast field of facts admits of, they are not to be rejected on light grounds. They enable us to set forth intelligibly the reasons of our own conviction, and to detect and expose the fundamental fallacies of apparent arguments. Since they direct us where the Logic of the Schools leaves us without a guide, their value is apparent.

The logical management of the syllogism involves much abstruseness respecting 'genus' and 'species,' the 'quantity' and 'quality' of 'propositions', 'contraries,' 'sub-contraries,' 'contradictions,' and 'subalterns.' Stepping by 'illative conversion,' 'six rules to be observed with respect to categorical syllogism' next demand attention, followed hard by eleven moods which can be used in a legitimate syllogism, Viz.—— A, A, A, A, A, I, A., E, E, A, E, O, A, I, I, A, O, O, E, A, E, E, A, O, E, I, O, I, A, I, O, A, O.' In the middle of this abstract train march the 'undistributed middle' and the 'illicit process,' attended by four figures represented by the following mnemonic lines, which must be carefully committed to memory:'—

Fig. 1. bArbArA, cElArEnt, dArII, fErIOque prioris.

Fig. 2. cEsArE, dAmEstrEs, fEstInO, bArOkO,* secundæ.

Fig. 3. tertia, dArAptI, dIsAmIs, dAtIsI, fElAptOn, bOkArdO,** fErlsO, habet; quarta insuper addit.

Fig. 4. brAmAntIp, cAmEnEs, dImArIs, fEsApo, frEsIsOn.

A motley group, too numerous to be particularised, bring up the complex rear of 'Modals,' 'Hypotheticals,' 'Conditionals,' and 'Disjunctives.' This is certainly not the portal through which the populace can at present pass to logic, even if such logic helped them to all truth, and saved them from all fallacy.

But this species of logic is not without interest. Symbolic letters and mnemonic lines are not without attractions to those who understand them. There is poetry in an algebraic sign, when it is the emblem of a difficulty solved, and a wonderful result simply arrived at. To try the whole power of words, and discover every form of language in which a legitimate deduction can be expressed, is no ignoble task. It is a high discipline, but it belongs rather to the age of leisure than this of 'copperasfames, cotton-fuz, gin-riot, wrath, and toil'—to the luxuries rather than the utilities of learning.

There is the inefficiency of the syllogism, and also the vitiation produced by its employment.

1. It corrupts the taste for philosophical invention by placing philosophy in abstractions, and withdrawing it from the observation of nature.