e: but the predicate
never was quantified. The few who alluded to the possibility of such a
thing found reasons for not adopting it over and above the great reason,
that Aristotle did not adopt it. For Aristotle never ruled in physics or
metaphysics _in the old time_ with near so much of absolute sway as he has
ruled in logic _down to our own time_. The logicians knew that in the
proposition "all men are animals" the "animal" is not _universal_, but
_particular_ yet no one dared to say that _all_ men are _some_ animals, and
to invent the phrase, "_some_ animals are _all_ men" until Hamilton leaped
the ditch, and not only completed a system of enunciation, but applied it
to syllogism.

My own case is as peculiar as his: I have proposed to introduce
mathematical _thought_ into logic to an extent which makes the old stagers
cry:

"St. Aristotle! what wild notions!
Serve a _ne exeat regno_[710] on him!"

Hard upon twenty years ago, a friend and opponent who stands high in these
matters, and who is not nearly such a sectary of Aristotle and
establishment as most, wrote to me as follows: "It is said that next to the
man who forms the taste of the nation, the greatest genius is the man who
corrupts it. I mean therefore no disrespect, but very much the reverse,
when I say that I have hitherto always considered you as a great logical
heresiarch." Coleridge says he thinks that it was Sir Joshua Reynolds who
made the remark: which, to copy a bull I once heard, I cannot deny, because
I was not there when he said it. My friend did not call me to repentance
and reconciliation with the church: I think he had a guess that I was a
reprobate sinner. My offences at that time were but small: I went on
spinning syllogism systems, all alien from the common logic, until I had
six, the initial letters of which, put together, from the {334} names I
gave before I saw what they would make, bar all repentance by the words

RUE NOT!

leaving to the followers of the old school the comfortable option of
placing the letters thus:

TRUE? NO!

It should however be stated that the question is not about absolute truth
or falsehood. No one denies that anything I call an inference is an
inference: they say that my alterations are _extra-logical_; that they are
_material_, not _formal_; and that logic is a _formal_ science.

The distinction between material and formal is easily made, where the usual
perversions are not required. A _form_ is