Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/810

 786 LOGIC nor handles it at length, deferring it rather for more detailed treatment. A comparatively clear account, however, of what is understood by him under the head of being as truth and non-being as falsity may be extracted from the various passages referred to, and little doubt can remain that being so regarded is in a peculiar sense the matter of analytical (i. e., logical) researches. Being as truth and non-being as falsity refer to and rest upon combination and division of the elementary parts of thought. For truth and falsity have no significance when applied to things, but only to the connexion of thought which is dominated by the one principle of non-contradiction. Nay, thinking has not even immediate and direct reference to being as such, but only to being as the existent, as qualified, or quantified, or modified in some other way (i.e., according to the categories), and it is in its very essence the conjunction or unifying of elements. What cannot be conjoined, as, e.g., the notions of elementary facts themselves, are not either true or false, and are not matters of thought. Thought thus moves in a definite sphere, that of the combinable or separable, the correspondence of conceptions with real relations, and has its limits on the one hand in the elementary data apprehended by intellect (i/oOs = reason), and on the other hand in the infinite sea of particular, accidental qualifications of things (o-v/j./3f&-r]K6Ta.). The possibility of contradictory assertions (for true and false judgments together make up the contradiction, rb 8e &amp;lt;rvvoov irepl fj.fpio-fj.ki avTitydtrews) is the distinguishing mark of thought. Now it is this very possibility that lies at the root of all the analytical researches. Not, indeed, that one can assume for Aristotle a view which has appeared in later logical works, that all forms of logical reasoning are to be deduced from the principle of contradiction. Quite the reverse. The common axioms underlie all processes of proof, direct or indirect, but they do not enter into or form part of proof. Nothing can be deduced from them ; but their authority can be appealed to against any one who refuses to allow a conclusion reached by a correct syllogism from true premisses. 1 (The nerve of logical proof would thus lie in the disjunctive proposition ; either this conclusion is to be granted or the principle of contradiction is denied. ) Now the analytical researches are in especial the treatment of combination and separation in thought. For even the syllogism may be regarded as only a complex judgment or synthesis, and in the exposition of the forms of combination and separation we shall find a complete system extending from the unproved principles and exhibiting the methods according to which thought proceeds towards the determination of the essential properties of things or the discrimination of various heads under which the transitory and accidental attributes may be advantageously classed. So far then as one can judge, the matter of Aristotle s analytical researches may be expressed as the concrete nature of thought, characterized by its fundamental attribute, the possibility of contradiction, correlated with the real system of things, and having as its end the realization of systematic knowledge, i.e., the adequate subjective interpretation of being. 10. The indication that the analytics have to do with being as conceived by thought, conducted under the general axiom of non contradiction and expressed in language, requires to be filled up by a more detailed treatment of the Aristotelian theory of thought in relation to being. Upon the characteristics assigned to thought or knowledge in this special relation, must depend the general nature of the Aristotelian logic, the determination of the scope of logical treatment, and the essence of logical method. For from a quite similar statement regarding the province within which logic moves totally diverse conclusions might be drawn respecting the precise function of logical method. One might have either a formal doctrine or lechnic, or a real methodology, either an attempt to evolve logical principles from the axiom of contradiction, or a development of the laws according to which thought, necessarily acting under the said axiom, proceeds towards the construction of knowledge. The history of logic clearly shows how differently the matter of the analytics may be viewed. For one of the possible conclusions, that logic is a technic or quasi-mathematical exposition of formal relations, has been accepted as the undoubted result of Aristotle s teaching, and has so prevailed as to make itself the current conception. 2 The other, the view of logic as theory of the method of scientific thought, has been cast entirely into the back ground, so far as logical doctrines are concerned, and, if allowed at all, has been regarded as foundation for a species of applied logic an appendix to the other. 11. Not much aid is afforded directly by any classification or division of the books now collected together as the On/anon. As above noted, the Prior and Posterior Analytics with the Topics form one connected whole, while the Categories and the DC Enunciation stand apart as isolated treatments of special problems, not organi cally or necessarily part of the research. The genuineness of both these treatises has been doubted (see ARISTOTLE, vol. ii p 514)
 * is not improbable that both are redactions of Aristotelian

1 Cf. generally Anal. Post.,. 14. 2 Cf. Brandis, Gr.-rom. Phil., ii. 373-75. material, perhaps drawing from other lost writings of Aristotle, perhaps based on oral teaching, by some Aristotelian scholar. A summary view of the contents of the other books will be found at vol. ii. p. 516. 12. The logical researches as a whole manifest a strong unity, and at the same time refer to one fundamental opposition, that between apodictic and dialectic reasoning. 3 The opposition between apodictic and dialectic is in the Aristo telian system the development of that which had already played so important a part in Plato and Socrates, the distinction between science and opinion. Knowledge in the strict sense had there pre sented itself as the generalized notion referring to being in its very essence, and resting on thought or reason. Opinion is the quasi- knowledge of the particular, referring to that which is not being but only accident, and resting on sense or imagination. In the Platonic method this distinction had come forward as the under lying basis for the opposition of philosophy and sophistical rhetoric; in Aristotle a much more precise formulation is given of the char acteristics of the two opposed forms of thought, and the connexion between opinion or dialectic and rhetorico-sophistical discussion is made more concrete and profound. Dialectic, with Aristotle, is the system resulting from the attempt to reduce to rule or generalize modes of argument which rest upon current received doctrines as principles, which move within the region of interests about which current opinions pro and con are to be found, and which terminate not in the decisive solution of a problem but in clearing the way for a more profound research or at least in the establishment of the thesis as against an opponent. Dialectic, then, has no special pro vince ; it deals with Koivd or ej/8oa, and its methods are perfectly general. On the one hand, as being the application of reasoning, it refers to and employs the specific types of reasoning, syllogism and induction ; on the other hand, as being applied to matters of opinion, and borrowing its principles from current floating dicta about matters of common interest, the types of reasoning tend in it to assume special forms resembling those employed in rhetoric (which is a kind of offshoot from dialectic the application of dia lectic to political principles). The province of dialectic being thus essentially vague, the matters about which dialectic reasoning is concerned being of the most fluctuating character, there must be, for Aristotle, the greatest difficulty in determining, per se and apart from the opposition to apodictic, what is the character of dialectic syllogism and induction. Nor can it be said that the interpreter of Aristotle has an easy task in the endeavour to discover what pre cisely is dialectical reasoning and in what way the forms which are assumed to be common both to apodictic and dialectic come to have any application to the fluctuating moss of current opinions. It is comparatively simple to say apodictic and dialectic differ in this, that the one rests on principles essential, necessary, seen to be true, while the other proceeds from data which are merely received as credible and as containing probable, received opinions on a subject about which there may be difference of view ; and it may be added that in the one we reach conclusions which are essential, in which the predicate is necessarily and universally true of the subject, while in the other the conclusion remains, like the data, credible merely, and is, at best, only one of the probable answers to a question. But there remains the difficulty, which is certainly not cleared up by any direct statement from Aristotle of what nature is the syllogistic inference that applies to material of this kind ? what is the nervus probandi in a dialectic syllogism ? There are two possible views either that the principle of syllogistic inference is purely formal, deducible from the characteristic of thought as either affirming or denying in reference to a particular subject, and therefore capable of application either to probable or to necessary matter, or that the syllogism is explicable only as a form in which knowledge is estab lished and is applicable but per acddcns, as one may express it, to probable matters. Under this second view, the possibility and reality of syllogistic inference would be traced to the correlative peculiarities of human thought and of the nature of the objects of thought, and it would follow that in strictness there is no dialectic syllogism. Such a conclusion at first sight appears to stand in sharp opposition to quite emphatic utterances of Aristotle, but if we suppose, for the sake of example, that a dialectic syllogism were framed, we should readily discern that the link of connexion be tween data and conclusion, the ncrvus prdbatidi, as it may be called, does not in fact differ from that involved in the apodictic syllogism. The merely probable character of the data prevents the conclusion 3 The most important treatments of the principles and details of the Aristo telian logic, which are here drawn upon freely, are (1), instar omnium, that of Prantl (Gesch. d. Logik, i. pp. 87-346); (2) that of Brandis, Aristoteles, pp. 148-434. and Aristotelisch.es Lehrgebciude, pp. 12-C2 (in which there is sharp criti cism of Prantl s view) ; (3) that of Grote, Aristotle, vols. i. and ii. pp. 1-134 (most patient and accurate, but tending continuously to minimize the speculative element) ; (4) that of St Hilaire, in his essay De la Logique d Aristote, 2 vols., 1S3S, and in liis translation of the Organon ; (5) that of Biese, Phil. d. Arist., i. 44-319. Trendelenburg s Elementa Logices Aristotelex, Waltz s edition of the Organon, and Ueberweg s System der Logik contain much of value. Mr Poste s translation of the Post. Anal, and Sophis. Elenchi, Mr E. Wallace s Outlines of the Phil, of Aristotle, and Mr Magrath s Selections from the Organon will also be found of service.