Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/155

Rh a course in minor logic constructed along the following lines will, to my mind, render the best educational service: Definition and classification, with special emphasis upon use as determining the meaning of terms. The interpretation of propositions and the relation between form and meaning, with much stress laid upon the complexity of actual thinking rather than upon categories, predicables and symbols. The study of the syllogism as a form to which arguments may be reduced for the purpose of critical analysis. Training in ability to examine the validity of premises and their application to particular cases. And finally, the study of inductive methods with the view of familiarizing students with the actual ways by which knowledge is discovered.

All this means that logic is essentially a psychological rather than a philosophical study; that its content is mental phenomena, because the study of methods is but the study of the human mind engaged in the search of truth; that induction and deduction are in reality two constantly interplaying processes and are never found to be what the time-honored division of text-books suggests. Discussions of controversial topics, in which logicians delight, and from which no text-book, so far as I know, is wholly free, should be excluded. They have little interest for most students and besides obscuring the real content of minor logic, are likely to produce the impression that logic lacks definiteness and substantial basis. It is much better to hand over speculative questions to philosophy proper. Enough will be left for the course in logic in the time usually allotted it. What Professor Hyslop has said is eminently true: "Logic has been made too formal for usefulness and postponed too late in the course. It ought to follow mathematics immediately, to correct the confidence in reasoning that that science inculcates consciously or unconsciously."

A word, in closing, upon a possible criticism of that part of logic which treats of inductive method. Why study logic in order to become familiar with the methods of science? Why not go directly to the several sciences themselves?

"We sometimes can not see the wood for the trees; and lose the broad outlines in the multiplicity of details." Just as we need to get out from among the trees to look at the wood; to stand some distance from the building to get a full view of it, so the scientist must needs view the structure of scientific knowledge from outside his own special field.

It is a frequent experience that students become so engaged in the multiplicity of fascinating phenomena of one science, or charmed by