date

31 July 1814 Logic Ch. │ │
31 July 1814

Logic

Ch. │ │ Aristotle's Præcognita

'.1

6

2

Even before that definition - before even this sort of definition - is compleated, comes a parenthesis by which, of the narrowness of the extent attributed to the art by these its cultivators, intimation is already given. - Logic, says the Bishop, which according to the figure of Synecdoche is also called Dialectica: the figure of Synecdoche, it is that figure of the Rhetorician, by which the part is put instead of the whole.

A very inauspicious commencement this for a treatise on an art which in one of its most useful branches is the art of correct expression, true representation. Before so much as the definition of it is compleated, in comes a formulary taken from that art which with little impropriety might be termed the art of misrepresentation.

The art called Logic is the same art say they as the art called Dialectics which being interpreted is the art of disputation, viz. in mood and figure. What is true of the art of logic is that this art of disputation forms a part. But is it thence also true that Logic and the art of disputation are one and the same object? names for one and the same thing? If so, then so is a tree and a branch of that same tree.

 Quære whether quite[?] finished 31 July 1814.

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    '.3.I Definition of Logic, according to the Aristotelians.

    An instrumental art, directing our mind into the cognition {the knowledge} of all things that are intelligible. Such according to Saunderson is the definition of logic as given by the School of Aristotle.

    Before the above, in the semblance of a definition, comes this short locution Logic is the art of reason. For recollection this short phrase may not impossibly have its use: for instruction - for original instruction - it is not in the nature of it to serve.

    By this art - such according to the account thus given of it, is its nature the human mind is directed.[?] - Good:- for so it is said to be by any other art, by every one of those fictitious entities that bears the name of art. Directed? - but into and in what? into knowledge - knowledge of all things intelligible, the only things capable of being known, subjectible to the dominion of knowledge - into knowledge - but into nothing else.

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     Confer with what has been already written under the head of use.

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     31 July 1814 - Make Arist.'s Præcognita a separate Chapter. It will come best when the whole of J B's Præcognita have been displayed.

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