English Positivism Author:Hippolyte Taine Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. This little phrase sums up the whole system. Familiarise yourself with it, for it explains all Mill's theories. His definitions and his innovations comme... more »nce alike from this starting-point. In all forms and degrees of knowledge, he has recognised the knowledge only of facts, and of their relations. Now logic, as yott know, has two cornerstones, the Theories of Definition and of Proof. Since the days of Aristotle, logicians have passed their time in polishing them. They have only dared to touch them respectfully, as if they were holy. The utmost that any innovator has occasionally ventured on, has been to turn them carefully in order to put them in a better light. Mill overturns, cuts, pares away, and replaces them both in a similar manner, and by the same means. I Am quite aware that people are laughed at now-a-days for .reasoning on definitions.; but you, I hope, are not guilty of this absurdity. No theory is more fruitful in universal and important consequences ; it is the root by which the tree of science grows and lives. For in defining things'" we mark out their nature. To introduce a new idea of definition is to introduce a new idea of the nature of things, of what beings are, of what they are composed, and of the elements into which they are capable of being resolved. In this lies the merit oi these dry speculations; the philosopher seems occupied with matters of mere convention, while, in fact, he is mapping out the universe. Take, say logicians, an animal, a plant, a sentiment, a geometrical figure, an objector a group of objects. No doubt the object has its properties, but it has also its essence. It manifests itself to the outer world by an indefinite number of effects and qualities; but all these modes of being are the consequences or the results of it...« less