Syllogistic.

are expressions of the real or of the unreal, of historical or of pure imagination; they are certainly not definitions of universals.

This exclusion cannot meet with great difficulties. It is already almost an accomplished fact, and the only thing required is to render it explicit, decisive, and coherent. But what is to be done with all that part of human experience which is called syllogistic, consisting of judgments and reasonings which are based on concepts. What is syllogistic? Is it to be looked down upon from above with contempt, as something useless, as has so often been done in the reaction of the humanists against scholasticism, in absolute idealism, in the enthusiastic admiration of our times for the methods of observation and experiment of the natural sciences? Syllogistic, reasoning in forma, is not a discovery of truth ; it is the art of exposing, debating, disputing with oneself and others. Proceeding from concepts already formed, from facts already observed and making appeal to the persistence of the true or of thought (such is the meaning of the principle of identity and contradiction), it infers consequences from these data, that is, it represents what has already been discovered. Therefore, if it be an idem per idem from the point of view

of invention, it is most efficacious as a teaching and an exposition. To reduce affirmations to the syllogistic scheme is a way of controlling one's own thought and of criticizing that of others. It is easy to laugh at syllogisers, but, if syllogistic has been born and retains its place, it must have good roots of its own. Satire applied to it can concern only its abuses, such as the attempt to prove syllogistically questions of fact, observation, and intuition, or the neglect of profound meditation and unprejudiced investigation of problems, for syllogistic formality. And if so-called mathematical Logic can sometimes aid us in our attempt to remember with ease, to manipulate the results of our own thought, let us welcome this form of the syllogism also, long prophesied by Leibnitz and essayed by many, even in our days.

But precisely because syllogistic is the art of exposing and of debating, its theory cannot hold the first place in a philosophical Logic, usurping that belonging to the doctrine of the concept, which is the central and dominating doctrine, to which is reduced everything logical in syllogistic, without leaving a residuum (relations of concepts, subordination, co-ordination, identification, and so on). Nor must it ever be forgotten that the concept, the (logical) judgment,

False Logic

and true Esthetic.

and the syllogism do not occupy the same position. The first alone is the logical fact, the second and third are the forms in which the first manifests itself. These, in so far as they are forms, cannot be examined save æsthetically (grammatically); in so far as they possess logical content, only by neglecting the forms themselves and passing to the doctrine of the concept.

This shows the truth of the ordinary remark to the effect that he who reasons ill, also speaks and writes ill, that exact logical analysis is the basis of good expression. This truth is a tautology, for to reason well is in fact to express oneself well, because the expression is the intuitive possession of one's own logical thought. The principle of contradiction, itself, is at bottom nothing but the aesthetic principle of coherence. It will be said that starting from erroneous concepts it is possible to write and to speak exceedingly well, as it is also possible to reason well; that some who are dull at research may yet be most limpid writers. That is precisely because to write well depends upon having a clear intuition of one's own thought, even if it be erroneous; that is to say, not of its scientific, but of its æsthetic truth, since it is this truth itself. A philosopher like Schopenhauer can

imagine that art is a representation of the Platonic ideas. This doctrine is absolutely false scientifically, yet he may develop this false knowledge in excellent prose, æsthetically most true. But we have already replied to these objections, when we observed that at that precise point where a speaker or a writer enunciates an ill-thought concept, he is at the same time speaking ill and writing ill. He may, however, afterwards recover himself in the many other parts of his thought, which consist of true propositions, not connected with the preceding errors, and lucid expressions may with him follow upon turbid expressions.

All enquiries as to the forms of judgments and Logic reformed. of syllogisms, on their conversion and on their various relations, which still encumber treatises on Logic, are therefore destined to become less, to be transformed, to be reduced to something else.

The doctrine of the concept and of the organism of the concepts, of definition, of system, of philosophy, and of the various sciences, and the like, will fill the place of these and will constitute the only true and proper Logic.

Those who first had some suspicion of the intimate connexion between Esthetic and Logic and conceived Esthetic as a Logic of sensible knowledge, were strangely addicted to applying

logical categories to the new knowledge, talking of asthetic concepts, asthetic judgments, æsthetic syllogisms, and so on. We are less superstitious as regards the solidity of the traditional Logic of the schools, and better informed as to the nature of Esthetic. We do not recommend the application of Logic to Esthetic, but the liberation of Logic from æsthetic forms. These have given rise to non-existent forms or categories of Logic, due to the following of altogether arbitrary and crude distinctions.

Logic thus reformed will always be formal Logic; it will study the true form or activity of thought, the concept, excluding single and particular concepts. The old Logic is ill called formal; it were better to call it verbal or formalistic. Formal Logic will drive out formalistic Logic. To attain this object, it will not be necessary to have recourse, as some have done, to a real or material Logic, which is not a science of thought, but thought itself in the act; not only a Logic, but the complex of Philosophy, in which Logic also is included. The science of thought (Logic) is that of the concept, as that of fancy (Esthetic) is the science of expression. The well-being of both sciences lies in exactly following in every particular the distinction between the two domains.