Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/43

Rh § 21. Logic is another instance. Men reasoned, generation after generation, long before they knew a single dialectical rule, or had any notion of the construction of the syllogism. The principles of logic were operative in every ratiocination, yet the reasoner was incognisant of their influence until Aristotle anatomised the process, and gave out the law of thought in its more obvious and ordinary workings. Whether Aristotle's rudiments of logic have not an antecedent rudiments—which time may yet bring to light—is a somewhat unsettled problem in speculation.

§ 22. The same analogy may be observed, to a large extent, in the formation of our civil laws. The laws which hold society together, operate with the force of instincts, and after the manner of vague traditions, long before they are digested into written tables. The written code does not create the law; it merely gives a distinct promulgation, and a higher degree of authority, to certain floating principles which had operated on people's practice antecedently. Laws, in short, exist, and bind society, long before they exist as established, or even as known laws. They have an occult and implied influence, before they obtain a manifest and systematic form. They come early in the order of nature, but late in the order of knowledge; early