Logic

Abstract

A LOGICIAN is a person who takes infinite pains to solve problems which present no manner; of difficulty to ordinarymortals. This may be, and nodoubt is, because ordinary mortals live and die unconscious of the inconsistencies of general theory. The logician is therefore of necessity a very serious person, and to suspect a twinkle in his eye when he is propounding his problem is to undermine his authority. But there is another reason why he must be serious. If he would make formal logic a distinctive science he must walk warily between the devil and the deep sea, for on the one hand he has to beware of falling into pure matters of grammar, the use and misuse of the parts of speech, and on the other hand he has to avoid the abyss of metaphysics. Indeed if one were to take a pencil and score through everything in a treatise on logic which really depends on an intelligent understanding and use of grammar and everything also which depends on a disputable metaphysical theory, it would be difficult to be sure that anything would remain. There used to be a subject, taught at universities, called rhetoric, and many chairs of it still survive, but it would puzzle any one now to say definitely what a professor of rhetoric is expected to teach. It looks as though logic may some day and very soon be in a similar case.

Logic.

By W. E. Johnson. Part 1. Pp. xl + 255. 16s. net. Part 2. Demonstrative Inference: Deductive and Inductive. Pp. xx + 258. 14s. net. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1921, 1922.)