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A Treatise on Logic, Or, the Laws of Pure Thought (1866)
A Treatise on Logic Or the Laws of Pure Thought - 1866 Author:Francis Bowen 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: CHAPTER II. DEFINITION OF LOGIC. Divisions of the Science. — Utility of the Study. LOGIC is the Science of the Necessary Laws of Pure Thought. The Gre... more »ek word, oyoy, from which Logic is derived, signifies both the inward thought, and the word or outward form in which this thought is expressed; and thus includes both the ratio and the oratio of the Latins. This fact, and the intimate connection which, as we have already seen, exists between Thought and Language, has caused some writers, especially those who adopt the Nominalist theory to its full extent, to maintain that " Logic is entirely conversant about Language." But it is not so; for Logic is primarily and essentially conversant with Thought, and only secondarily and accidentally with Language ; that is, it treats of Language so far only as this is the vehicle of Thought. Just the reverse is true of the science of . Grammar, which treats primarily of Language, and only secondarily of Thought. Logic might be called the Grammar of Thought. Others have held that " the process or operation of reasoning is alone the appropriate province of Logic." But this is putting the part for the whole, and is as inadequate as it would be to restrict Geometry to the measurement of spherical bodies, to the exclusion of lines, angles, plane surfaces, and rectilinear solids. There are three classes of the products of Thought, namely, Concepts, Judgments, andInferences or Reasonings, with each of which Logic is immediately concerned, as, indeed, no one of them can be adequately discussed without consideration of both the others. If, on the one hand, it can be said that conception and judgment are both subsidiary to the process of reasoning, so, on the other, judgment is the primary and essential operation, of which conception and infe...« less