all true science and wisdom. And Lactantius writes-" That portion of philosophy which we call logic is that which contains dialectics and the rules of reasoning. The divine reason has no need of any such assistance: it resides not in the form of words, but in the heart, and it is of little moment what language we employ; for it is things we seek, and not words" (102).

Lactantius, like many others, forgets that the question is not whether the divine reason needs any such assistance, but whether our reason needs it; and, as our reason resides in the head as well as in the heart, we need the assistance of logic for the former as well as faith for renewing the latter. The expression of St. Paul is very remarkable-" Put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and holiness of truth "(Eph. iii. 24)—righteousness having reference to the mind, holiness to the heart and so St. Paul, touching the righteousness which was of the law, says that he was blameless; yet esteems himself the chief of sinners, because he persecuted Christ.

Even apart from religion we may observe a distinction between these two functions of the mind; and may speak of one person as a man of parts without judgment, and of another as illiterate and yet having good judgment. The heart again is the seat of the affections, according to the impulses of which thought is generated and the body is prompted to action; and, therefore, the Psalmist prays, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me; cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me."

And we may also observe that the dispute, whether logic is a science or an art, arises from a neglect of these distinctions. If logic be limited to the mental perception of external things and the comparison of one thing with another—and the classification of the thoughts which these perceptions suggest and of the language in which these thoughts find utterance-then would logic be nothing more than an art. But if it be also necessary to study the workings and correct the irregularities of the instrument by which this mental process is carried on -to look inwards as well as outwards-to know ourselves truly in order that our judgment of other things may be correctly formed-then logic must be regarded as one of the noblest of sciences in itself, and as the greatest promoter of all other sciences, by strengthening that faculty of reasoning on the force and precision of which they are all dependent for

VOL. XXX.-E

whatever advance they make and whatever exactness they attain.

Bacon himself would have been all the better for the science

of logic in this higher sense. He would not, in ignorance of Plato's philosophy, have spoken so disdainfully of him as Coleridge remarked; nor would he in ignorance of geometry, and in opposition to his contemporary Galileo, have "rejected with the most positive disdain the system of Copernicus," as Hume has pointed out (214).

"The idea of working upward, from a complete and accurate interpretation of nature to a knowledge of nature's God, may seem a feasible and unexceptionable maxim in common conversation or discourse; but, when viewed as the keystone to a logical and philosophical system, it cannot fail to prove both unsatisfactory and mischievous. Perhaps, the true and sole conception which Bacon had of his own logical system was that it should operate as a check upon, those extreme views which philosophers had entertained relative to human reason. They vastly overrated its powers and capabilities in working out the unity of science. Under this impression he wished to call men back again to the study of the material universe as a suitable counterpoise to this one-sided estimation of the value of logical methods. As vulgar logic (says he), which governs its subjects by syllogism, pertains to all sciences and not to physical science only, so likewise our logic, which proceeds by induction, embraces all' " (211).

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Bacon's method consists in using the known properties of things to investigate and determine the general principles on which all such properties depend. But it is evident that the accuracy of this determination will only be proportionate to the accuracy of our acquaintance with those several proper ties and the correctness of our inferences from the same; and, as every general inference is meant to cover a multitude of particulars, we may at once perceive how necessary it is that the mental faculties should be clear to observe, and the reasoning power strong to deduce, the true inference from those ob-. servations or experiments an enlightened sagacity has first devised.

The first aphorism of Bacon embraces, in fact, his whole theory:-"Man, the servant and interpreter of nature, does and understands only so far as he may have observed by sense, or mentally, the order of nature beyond this he neither knows nor can know" (202) What shall we say, then, of the disorders of nature, both physical and moral, with which the world abounds? And how shall we know whether what we suppose to be the order of nature may not be a misapprehension on our part, or be the result of a disordered state of things? If there be any one thing concerning which we may

be confident that the true order of nature has been discovered it is the motion of the heavenly bodies, as it was logically inferred by Copernicus, and experimentally established by Galileo; yet this true order was rejected with disdain by Bacon, and the disorderly hypothesis of Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe asserted as the truth. And in like manner, in the world around us, a hasty induction from a few isolated observations has led geologists so far astray that they have devised systems of arrangement of terrestrial bodies as confused and unphilosophical as Ptolemy had devised for the heavenly bodies, and boast that they are following the Baconian method.

And logic itself, on the other hand, is too often degraded so far as to be regarded as nothing more than the art of arranging correctly the words of any proposition or argument. Archbishop Whately gives too much countenance to this verbal school of logic in defining it as the "art of employing language properly for the purpose of reasoning." It is this; but it is much more than this-it is the art of reasoning as well as speaking with propriety; and to reason correctly is far more difficult, far more rare, and requires far more careful and diligent training, than speaking or writing correctly. Mr. Chretien, speaking of Archbishop Whately's logic, observes:

"To trace this evil tendency in detail through his work would be quite foreign to our present purpose. Two of the more general features may, however, be mentioned here as illustrative of the turn of mind with which this logical theory is associated. In the first place, he is led to attach far too much importance to the mere arrangements of words, and to measure the elasticity and pliability of thought by that of the raw material, out of which its finished representations are fabricated. The most striking instance of this defect is found in his way of treating hypothetical and inductive arguments: he compels methods of reasoning which, when viewed in the thinking mind, are clearly distinct from the deductive process and from each other to bow to an artifice of language, and submit to the one unvarying form of syllogism." And, secondly, he shows a continual disposition to underrate the number of real questions at issue among mankind, and to increase in proportion the number of merely verbal differences. His common way of dealing with contending disputants is to accuse them of an equivocation, to assure them that they either mean the same thing by different words, or use the same words to signify distinct things. This is in fact to assume that men can with equal ease be made of one mind and of one vocabulary. The truth is that the minds of men differ in actual constitution as widely as their bodies: as we do not all spontaneously move our limbs in the same manner, so neither do we think alike. When discipline makes men uniform and simultaneous in their motions, it only suspends their natural peculiarities and does not destroy them" (480).

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Nor is it desirable that men should be reduced, either in mind or body, to the condition of mere machines, so as always to think and act precisely alike under similar circumstances; for this would be limiting all mankind to a partial, one-sided, narrow view of all things. God alone comprehends truth in the abstract and in all its bearings. Man is finite and limited, and can at best only comprehend a small portion and a few of the bearings of the many-sided truth. By the diversity of our mental constitution one man regards the truth in an aspect somewhat different from that in which it is regarded by other men; yet all these various views of truth must be considered and combined in order to arrive at a correct apprehension of the truth in all its fulness: none are superfluous-none can be safely dispensed with. And, as in constructing a complicated piece of mechanism, one man is employed in some parts to which he has given special attention, led thereto by peculiar adaptation of his faculties to that particular kind of work-and others, in like manner, give their exclusive attention to other parts of the machine, and it thus becomes far more perfect than it would have been if one man had undertaken to construct the whole-so it is in the mental processes by which truth is elaborated. And this variety, when rightly understood, becomes also a beautiful provision for binding men to each other under a sense of their mutual dependence; instead of becoming, as is too often the case where it is misunderstood, a cause disunion, strife, and estrangement, if not of avowed hostility. The Church is represented as an unit of the most perfect kind, being called one body; yet in this unity is found such a diversity as that we speak of, for it consists of many members and no two of these members have the same office. So it is with systems of logic.uft of of of}

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A very able and candid "Historical Sketch" of all the conspicuous or influential systems of logic, both of ancient and modern times, is given by Mr. Blakey in the work now before us. We have only extracted such portions as would serve to illustrate the argument we had in hand; but we can confidently recommend this book to all who wish for further information on the general subject. There is not, we believe, any other work of the same compass in the English language; and either in the text or in the references they will find a full though succinct history of logic.

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53

ART. III. The One Primeval Language traced Experimentally through Ancient Inscriptions in Alphabetic Characters of Lost Powers from the Four Continents: including the Voice of Israel from the Rocks of Sinai : and the Vestiges of Patriarchal Tradition from the Monuments of Egypt Etruria, and Southern Arabia. With Fllustrative Plates, a Harmonized Table of Alpha"bets, Glossaries, and Translations. By the Rev. C. FORSTER, B.D., Author of "Mahometanism Unveiled," and of the "Geography of Arabia." Bentley. 1851.

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THIS long title page would lead us to expect a voluminous work; whereas it only consists of one hundred and eighty-two octavo pages, and yet will satisfy the expectation which such a title is calculated to raise. For it deals with facts, which in such eases are necessarily few; and it avoids lengthy discussions hypothetical speculations which once had their dayday which we trust is now gone by for ever. In the "Historical Geography of Arabia," Mr. Forster gave us reason to expect further light on the primitive alphabets-a subject which was then opening before him in the decyphering of the ancient characters found inscribed on the rocks of Southern Arabia; and those characters are now shown to have so many points of resemblance with the characters inscribed on the rocks in the vicinity of Mount Sinai, while both agree in principle and often in form with the oldest enchorial characters of Egypt, as to warrant the conclusion that characters in use among the first inhabitants of Arabia, from the Mediterranean sea to the Indian ocean, and from the Nile to the Euphrates, were substantially the same, and derived from one primeval source, which we may in popular phrase call Shemitic, though diverging shortly after the time of Abraham into the three branches of Ishmaelite, Phonician, and Egyptian dialects and forms, the Hebrew serving as a sort of common centre.

Right-minded persons are glad to find occasions of acknowledging the Providence of God in all things; and in the clearing up of so many mysterious points, and in the unveiling so much of the history of the ancient world, and bringing all mankind so much better acquainted with each other than at any former period, they will perceive a token that the mystery of God is about to be finished-that the times of the Gentiles have well nigh run their appointed course-that the natural branches are about to be graffed into their own olive tree.