remains to us. If the logician of the schoole does not enlighten the understanding, he is at least reputed not to offend the taste, and he wins the equivocal praise of Butler:—
'He'll run in debt by disputation,
And pay with ratiocination;
All this by syllogism, true
In mood and figure, he will do.'
Syllogisms are to truth what rhyme is to poetry. 'It is a well known fact that verse, faultless in form, may be utterly destitute of poetic fire or feeling.'**
* Bruce.
** A. J. D. D'Orsey, Eng. Gram., part 2, article Prosody.
According to the Logic of the Schools, 'the question respecting the validity of an argument is not whether the conclusion be true, but whether it follows from the premises adduced.' It was the bitter experience of Bordon of the delusiveness of such partial logic that induced him to exclaim, 'one fact is worth fifty arguments.'
With such authorities, 'a valid argument is that which it so stated that its conclusiveness is evident from the mere form of the expression.' But since it is admitted that if the data reasoned upon be incorrect, no logical skill can secure a correct result; it is evident that however faultless the form, the inquirer after truth is in no way nearer his object, unless he be instructed how to lay a foundation of faultless facts. He then, who is in love with truth rather than logomachy, will admit, in spite of the most ingenious analogies, that there is some room for a logic of facts, as well as a logic of words.
CHAPTER II. LOCKE-LOGIC.
Logic is a general guide to the discovery of truth, and teaches us its systematic communication to others. This definition is intended to combine logic and rhetoric into one system. According to a quotation in Pinnock's Guide to Knowledge, Locke defined logic as 'that art by which we rightly use our mental faculties in the discovery and communication of truth,' a definition, called by the writer, the definition of nature echoed by genius. There exists a natural connection between logic and rhetoric. The discovery of truth could avail us little if we were without the means of communicating it; and it is easy to see that it would be in vain to possess the means of communicating truth, unless we had the truth to communicate. Therefore, ingenuity is but ill employed in separating these mutual departments of learning which nature has connected together. Besides, the skill of the logician is as serviceable in the statement of a case, as in arguing it. Arrangement is as much a matter of logic as ratiocination; and to impress this neglected truth upon the young inquirer, is one reason for proposing a combined definition.
The mutual connection of logic and rhetoric is illustrated by the fact, that the Logic of the Schools is purely a branch of rhetoric. It consists in putting an argument into 'the most perspicuous form in which it can be exhibited,'*—i.e., in communicating it in the most efficient way to others.
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