rmed the Logic of the Schools. In the contempt entertained by many
modern philosophers for the syllogistic art, it will be seen that he by no
means participates; although the scientific theory on which its defence is
usually rested appears to him erroneous: and the view which he has
suggested of the nature 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 endeavoured to combat their theory in the
manner in which Diogenes confuted the sceptical reasonings against the
possibility of motion; remembering that Diogenes' 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 histori