and functions of the Syllogism may, perhaps,
afford the means of conciliating the principles of the art with as much as
is well grounded in the doctrines and objections of its assailants.

The same abstinence from details could not be observed in the First Book,
on Names and Propositions; because many useful principles and distinctions
which were contained in the old Logic have been gradually omitted from the
writings of its later teachers; and it appeared desirable both to revive
these, and to reform and rationalize the philosophical foundation on which
they stood. The earlier chapters of this preliminary Book will
consequently appear, to some readers, needlessly elementary and
scholastic. But those who know in what darkness the nature of our
knowledge, and of the processes by which it is obtained, is often involved
by a confused apprehension of the import of the different classes of Words
and Assertions, will not regard these discussions as either frivolous, or
irrelevant to the topics considered in the later Books.

On the subject of Induction, the task to be performed was that of
generalizing the modes of investigating truth and estimating evidence, by
which so many important and recondite laws of nature have, in the various
sciences, been aggregated to the stock of human knowledge. That this is
not a task free from difficulty may be presumed from the fact that even at
a very recent period, eminent writers (among whom it is sufficient to name
Archbishop Whately, and the author of a celebrated article on Bacon in the
_Edinburgh Review_) have not scrupled to pronounce it impossible.(1) The
author has endeavored to combat their theory in the manner in which
Diogenes confuted the skeptical reasonings against the possibility of
motion; remembering that Diogenes's argument would have been equally
conclusive, though his individual perambulations might not have extended
beyond the circuit of his own tub.

Whatever may be the value of what the author has succeeded in effecting on
this branch of his subject, it is a duty to acknowledge that for much of
it he has been indebted to several important treatises, partly historical
and partly philosophical, on the generalities and processes of physical
science, which have been published within the last few years. To these
treatises, and to their authors, he has endeavored to do justice in the
body of the work. But as with one of these writers, Dr. Whewell, he has
occasion frequentl