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46 faith (to which he fell a martyr in the massacre of Paris), procured many proselytes to his opinions in all the Protestant countries of Europe. In England his logic had the honour, in an age of comparative light and refinement, to find an expounder and methodiser in the author of Paradise Lost; and in some of our northern universities, where it was very early introduced, it maintained its ground till it was supplanted by the logic of Locke.

It has been justly said of Ramus, that, “although he had genius sufficient to shake the Aristotelian fabric, he was unable to substitute any thing more solid in its place:” but it ought not to be forgotten, that even this praise, scanty as it may now appear, involves a large tribute to his merits as a philosophical reformer. Before human reason was able to advance, it was necessary that it should first be released from the weight of its fetters. Dr Barrow, in one of his mathematical lectures, speaks of Ramus in terms far too contemptuous. “Homo, ne quid gravius dicam, argutulus et dicaculus.”—“Sane vix indignationi meæ tempero, quin illum accipiam pro suo merito, regeramque validius in ejus caput, quæ contra veteres jactat convicia.” Had Barrow confined this censure to the weak and arrogant attacks made by Ramus upon Euclid (particularly upon Euclid’s definition of Proportion), it would not have been more than Ramus deserved; but it is evident he meant to extend it also to the more powerful attacks of the same reformer upon the logic of Aristotle. Of these there are many which may be read with profit even in the present times. I select one passage as a specimen, recommending it strongly to the consideration of those logicians who have lately stood forward as advocates for Aristotle’s abecedarian demonstrations of the syllogistic rules. “In Aristotelis arte, unius præcepti unicum exemplum est, ac sæpissime nullum: Sed unico et singulari exemplo non potest artifex effici; pluribus opus est et dissimilibus. Et quidem, ut Aristotelis exempla tantummodo non falsa sint, qualia tamen sunt? Omne b est a: omne c est b: ergo omne c est a. Exemplum Aristotelis est puero à grammaticis et oratoribus venienti, et istam mutorum Mathematicorum linguam ignoranti, novum et durum: et in totis Analyticis istâ non Atticâ, non Ionicâ, non Doricâ, non Æolicâ, non communi, sed geometricâ linguâ usus est Aristoteles, odiosâ pueris, ignotâ populo, à communi sensu remotâ, à rhetoricæ usu et ab humanitatis usu alienissimâ.” (P. Rami pro Philosophica Parisiensis Academiæ Disciplina Oratio, 1550.) If these strictures should be thought too loose and declamatory, the reader may consult the fourth chapter (De Conversionibus) of the seventh book of Ramus’s Dialectics, where the same charge is urged, in my opinion, with irresistible force of argument.

It is observed, with great truth, by Condorcet, that, in the times of which we are now speaking, “the science of political economy did not exist. Princes estimated not the number of men, but of soldiers in the state;—finance was merely the art of plundering the people, without driving them to the desperation that might end in revolt;—and governments paid no other attention to commerce but that of loading it with taxes, of restricting it by privileges, or of disputing for its monopoly.”

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