NOTES ON INDUCTIVE LOGIC (BOOK I) BEING AN INTRODUCTION TO MILL'S SYSTEM OF LOGIC. BY THOMAS WOODHOUSE LEVIN, M.A. S. CATHARINE'S COLLEGE; INTERCOLLEGIATE LECTURER ON LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY; LATE DEPUTY KNIGHTBRIDGE PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, CAMBRIDGE; CAMBRIDGE: LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS. PREFACE. Although THE following Lectures contain an easy exposition of the chief topics of Logical Doctrine. primarily designed for the use of students preparing for University Examinations, yet it is hoped they may prove not uninteresting to the general reader. In the first part of the work there are explanations of notions and terms which were once specialized technicalities of logical science, but which are now so interwoven with current modes of thought and expression that a familiarity with their meaning is an indispensable part of all literary training. Lectures 7 and 8 will afford the enquirer sufficient insight into the Syllogistic process to enable him after a little practice to sift and test the assumptions, assertions, and arguments of reasoned discourse: a very valuable accomplishment in this age of easy credulity and easy incredulity. Part II. is devoted to the examination of the principles upon which are based the Experimental Methods of Induction. These Methods are worthy of careful study since they constitute the rational procedure of all Experience, and the Logic of Facts. Although Mr Mill's treatment of this subject is profound and exhaustive, it is not free from certain ambiguities and inconsistencies apt to embarrass the beginner. These it has been the endeavour of the author to remove, chiefly by a more accurate definition of the sphere of Causal Induction. The subject of Quantitative Induction or Theory of Probability is not touched upon, as it has been so recently and ably handled by other writers. The limits of the present volume have also precluded much notice of the Comparative Method of research, so largely employed in many branches of Modern Science. The scope of this work will be completed in a subsequent publication, dealing with the causes and remedies of Intellectual Error: an expansion of the topic usually discussed in Logical works under the designation of Fallacies. CAMBRIDGE, December, 1884. NOTES ON INDUCTIVE LOGIC. HISTORICAL RETROSPECT. THE systematic treatment of Logic as a branch of Philosophy seems to have been undertaken by the Greeks, partly for the purpose of discovering a Criterion of Truth, and partly with a view of formulating the principles upon which depends the Art of Rhetoric or Persuasion. Both these aims are discernible in every subsequent development of logical doctrine, and the influence of each is even now apparent in the divergent opinions held by modern writers on the scope and sphere of Logical enquiry. The search after the Criterion of Truth was a direct result of the sceptical crisis which marked the commencement of the middle or Socratic Era of Greek Philosophy-towards the close of the fifth century B. C. Men awoke to a new life of intellectual consciousness when they first became aware of the inevitable and impassable gulf which was fixed between the Subjective and Objective—when Democritus averred that colour, odour, flavour were only states of the percipient mind,—and when Protagoras declared that |