Page:O. F. Owen's Organon of Aristotle Vol. 1 (1853).djvu/14

vi yet wholesome influence: it is no wonder therefore that puny intellects, like weak stomachs, abhor and reject it. What florid declaimer can endure that the luxuriant boughs of verdant sophistry, the rich blossoms of oratorical fervour, should be lopped and pared by the stern axe of a syllogism, and the poor stripped trunk of worthless fallacy exposed unprotected to the nipping atmosphere of truth?

Like the science of which it treats, not only has the term "Logic" been variously applied, but even the Organon, as a whole, presents no great claim to unity. The term is neither found, as belonging to an art or science, in Aristotle, nor does it occur in the writings of Plato, and the appellation "Organon," given to the treatises before us, has been attributed to the Peripatetics, who maintained against the Stoics that Logic was "an instrument" of Philosophy. The book, according to M. St. Hilaire, was not called "Organon" before the 15th century, and the treatises were collected into one volume, as is supposed, about the time of Andronicus of Rhodes; it was translated into Latin by Boethius about the 6th century. That Aristotle did not compose the Organon as a whole, is evident from several portions having been severally regarded as logical, grammatical, and metaphysical, and even the Aristotelian names themselves, Analytic and Dialectic, are