Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/138

 126 F. H. BEADLEY'S PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC. I, importance is the ultimate view of reality and thought, which is I common to all such problems and binds logic and metaphysics j into a unity. I do not find that Mr. Bradley makes the view on which he proceeds clear, and it appears to me that the force of many of the discussions, in particular that with which the book closes, on the validity of inference, is weakened by the want of some definite statement. Mr. Bradley begins his inquiry with the treatment of the central problem of logical theory, the significance or import of the Judgment, and to this the whole of Book i. is devoted. Book ii. begins the discussion of Inference, and in its first part, expounds certain general types and principles of reasoning as substitute for the rejected syllogism. The second part of the Book is entirely critical and is devoted to an examination of the doc- trine of Association with its natural sequels, the idea of reasoning from particulars and the Inductive methods, and to an apprecia- tive though hostile review of Jevons's Equational Logic. Book iii. resumes the discussion of Inference, brings forward in the first part the main processes in which the essential characteristics of inference are to be detected, and endeavours to reduce these to their most general expression, and in the second part handles the ultimate problem, foreshadowed throughout all the discussion, of the relation between logical truth and real, objective connex- ion. The work, it will be seen, is at once comprehensive and has a certain systematic idea in it. Apart from the main inquiry, moreover, it abounds in good thinking, and no reader can fail to derive benefit from the acuteness with which isolated questions of psychological or metaphysical interest are handled. In truth, one is somewhat embarrassed with Mr. Bradley's riches, and would feel inclined at times to wish that he had pruned his work more closely. A little dissatisfaction is inevitable when a pro- mising problem is only hinted at, even though the glance given be one of undeniable acuteness. The frequency with which Mr. Bradley is compelled to make brief excursions into psychology and what he chooses to call metaphysics, and the importance of the relative matters, lead us to desire that he had substituted for much occasional disquisition one serious and careful statement of the way in which he regards thought as subject of psychological, logical and metaphysical treatment respectively. Such a state- ment is called for, not only in order to illumine his own results, but also as furnishing some guiding thread to his criticism of other views. Naturally, it is in the theory of Judgment that a logician's fundamental point of view comes to the front, and the judgment is here handled with great elaboration and much subtlety. Experi- ence must have taught every one who has made the attempt how difficult it is to express in other language the results a thinker has come to on a question of the greatest complexity, and I can hardly hope to have succeeded in adequately apprehending all