and Beautiful, that words are not only used as substitutes for thoughts, but, through the laws of association, they also serve to call up the same emotions which are naturally produced by the presence or imagination of the real objects which they denote. Thus, there are many words which have feelings of awe, sorrow, or affright so firmly associated with them, by long habit, that the mere utterance of them in a sermon is enough to solemnize the minds of the congregation, even before the hearers have time to think of what they mean.

The doctrine of the Nominalists, then, is true to this extent, that very often, in the use of language, there is nothing before the minds either of the speakers or the hearers but mere words; and yet these words are significantly and correctly used, and they answer their purpose of exciting emotion and imparting knowledge. But it is also often true, that, in the use of words, all the powers of the Understanding, or Thinking Faculty, are in active exercise ; — that we compare, combine, discriminate, judge, and discern new relations before unthought of, the subsidiary powers of the Memory and Imagination, all the while, furnishing their aid whenever needed; and it is only by such concomitant activity of the Thinking power, that we can have full assurance that the words in question are correctly used, and the boundaries of our knowledge are enlarged. Thus, in the thoughtful use of words, we are continually spreading out in our minds the attributes of which the Concepts are made up, individualizing them, comparing them with each other, discovering new relations between them, and carrying them up into higher orders of generalization, or extending them to more objects.

A few remarks may be necessary in explanation of the nomenclature which has been here employed. The English words thinking, thought, are commonly used, in a very vague and comprehensive sense, to denote any cognitive

act or object of the mind. But, as applied in Logic, they are strictly limited to one well-defined class of our cognitive functions. After the illustrations that have now been given, the peculiar characteristics of Thought properly so called are perhaps sufficiently understood.

Hamilton justly observes, that most of the words which signify operations of the mind have a triple ambiguity, for they may denote either, 1. the faculty; or, 2. the act; or, 3. the product of the act. To avoid this uncertainty, the Understanding is here used exclusively to denote the Faculty of Thinking in the narrower sense, or what Hamilton calls the "Elaborative Faculty," because it elaborates, or works up into Thought, the raw material which is furnished to it by the Perceptive powers. Like any other faculty, the Understanding at any particular time may, or may not, be in exercise. Its function or peculiar office is to think; hence, thinking denotes the act, while Thought signifies the product, of this faculty. As will be shown hereafter, Thought is the generic term, for there are three species. of it; viz. Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings or Inferences. The old logicians referred the origin of these three species of Thought to as many distinct faculties, which they denominated respectively Simple Apprehension, Judgment, and the Discursive Faculty. Of these, Simple Apprehension corresponds very nearly to that sort of Thinking which we now call Conception, its products being denominated Concepts. In like manner, the products of the Perceptive or Acquisitive Faculty, hitherto called Intuitions, might more conveniently be termed Percepts, as we should then have an English verb, perceive, to express the act of that Faculty of which these are products. If it were allowable to coin an English verb to express the act of intuition, answering to the German anschauen, analogy would direct us to say intuit. The Discursive Faculty (from discurrere, to run to and fro) was so called because, in Reasoning or

drawing Inferences, the mind runs over from one Judgment, as the Ground or Reason, to another, as the Consequence or Conclusion. But the whole Understanding is more properly called by this name; for, in forming Concepts, the mind runs over the Percepts or Intuitions from which they are derived, in order to separate the similar elements from the unlike, and consciously to unite the former into one product of Thought.

CHAPTER II.

DEFINITION OF LOGIC.

Divisions of the Science. Utility of the Study.

LOGIC is the Science of the Necessary Laws of Pure

Thought.

The Greek word, λóyos, from which Logic is derived, signifies both the inward thought, and the word or outward form in which this thought is expressed; and thus includes both the ratio and the oratio of the Latins. This fact, and the intimate connection which, as we have already seen, exists between Thought and Language, has caused some writers, especially those who adopt the Nominalist theory to its full extent, to maintain that "Logic is entirely conversant about Language." But it is not so; for Logic is primarily and essentially conversant with Thought, and only secondarily and accidentally with Language; that is, it treats of Language so far only as this is the vehicle of Thought. Just the reverse is true of the science of Grammar, which treats primarily of Language, and only secondarily of Thought. Logic might be called the Grammar of Thought.

Others have held that "the process or operation of reasoning is alone the appropriate province of Logic." But this is putting the part for the whole, and is as inadequate as it would be to restrict Geometry to the measurement of spherical bodies, to the exclusion of lines, angles, plane surfaces, and rectilinear solids. There are three classes of the products of Thought, namely, Concepts, Judgments, and

Inferences or Reasonings, with each of which Logic is immediately concerned, as, indeed, no one of them can be adequately discussed without consideration of both the others. If, on the one hand, it can be said that conception and judgment are both subsidiary to the process of reasoning, so, on the other, judgment is the primary and essential operation, of which conception and inference are only special forms or complex results.

Pure, or, as it is sometimes termed, Formal Thought, is the mere process of thinking, irrespective of what we are thinking about. It has already been said that the Acquisitive or Perceptive Faculty furnishes "the Matter," while the Understanding supplies "the Form," of our knowledge. This distinction between Matter and Form is one of considerable importance in the history of philosophy. The former is the crude material or the stuff of which anything consists, or out of which it is made; while the latter is the peculiar shape or modification given to it by the artist, whereby it has become this particular thing which it is, and not something else which might have been fashioned out of the same substance. Thus, wood is the Matter of the desk on which I am writing, whilst the Form is that which entitles it to be called a desk, rather than a table or a chair. Vocal sound is the Matter of speech, and articulation is its Form. It is evident that these are two correlative notions, each of which implies the other: Matter cannot exist except under some Form, and there cannot be any Form except of some given Matter. But though the two cannot actually be separated, the mind can consider each separately through that process, called abstraction, whereby the attention is wholly given to the one to the exclusion of the other. We may think separately of the attributes which are common to a whole class of Forms, disregarding altogether, for the moment, the Matter of which each of them really consists. Borrowing algebraic symbols, the Matter in each