PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC
BY
GEORGE HAYWARD JOYCE, S.J.
M.A., ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD
INTRODUCTION
THIS work is an attempt at a presentment of what is
frequently termed the Traditional Logic, and is intended for those who are
making acquaintance with philosophical questions for the first time. Yet it is impossible, even in a textbook such
as this, to deal with logical questions save in connexion with definite
metaphysical and epistemological principles.
Logic, as the theory of the mind's rational processes in regard of their
validity, must necessarily be part of a larger philosophical system. Indeed when
this is not the case, it becomes a mere collection of technical rules,
possessed of little importance and less interest. The point of view adopted in
this book is that of the Scholastic philosophy; and as far as is compatible
with the size and purpose of the work, some attempt has been made to vindicate
the fundamental principles on which that philosophy is based.
From one point of view,
this position should prove a source of strength. The thinkers who elaborated
our system of Logic, were Scholastics. With the principles of that philosophy,
its doctrines and its rules are in full accord. In the light of Scholasticism,
the system is a connected whole; and the subjects, traditionally treated in it,
have each of them its legitimate place.
When a philosopher
adopts some other standpoint, it is inevitable that his Logic must be
remodelled, if it is to be in harmony with his philosophical principles. For
some parts of the traditional science, there will be no place in his scheme.
And though these subjects may find treatment in his work, yet it will be
manifest that they are present as unwelcome guests, only tolerated out of
deference to custom and the exigencies of a popular demand. In such a case, a
young student may well be excused, if he fails to grasp the bearing of the
question at issue.
From another point of
view, it might seem that Scholastic principles must be a source of weakness.
Have not, it will be asked, the universities, one and all, long since discarded
Scholasticism?
That this is true of all
those universities which have submitted to secular influences, must be frankly
admitted. At our ancient seats of learning, there has been a complete neglect
of the great medieval philosophers, the representatives of that once famous
school. The names of Albert the Great,
of St. Thomas Aquinas, of
Duns Scotus are never mentioned. It is
not that they are weighed and found wanting. They are ignored. It is assumed
that there is nothing in them worth knowing. The practice of what certain German writers
have termed 'the leap over the middle ages (der Sprung uber das
Mittelalter)', has been universal. From Plotinus to Bacon has been regarded
as a blank in the history of philosophy.
[N1]
Yet by common consent the
period thus ignored was one of intense philosophic activity. Metaphysical
problems were discussed with an interest, a zeal, an acumen since unknown; and
some of the greatest intellects the world has ever seen were nurtured in the
schools of the day. Nor was the
philosophy of the Scholastics one of those immature systems, which arise when
the mind of man is called to grapple for the first time with the great problems
of the universe. These men had inherited the two streams of Greek and Arabian
thought. They had set themselves to master and to develop the conclusions of
Plato, of Aristotle, of Avicenna, of Averroes. They were influenced not by the
Peripatetic school alone, but further by Stoicism, Neo-platonism,
Augustinianism [N2]. It is significant
that nearly every thinker, even of those occupying a hostile position, who has
devoted enough time and attention to understand the matter, has expressed his
admiration for the great synthesis effected by the Scholastic philosophers. [N3]
When, therefore, the Neo-Scholastics
of to-day avail themselves of the results attained in that epoch, no wise man
will consider that this is likely to impair the value of their conclusions.
They are but claiming their share in the great inheritance of the past.
The deliberate ignoring
of so famous a period, and one so fruitful for the civilisation of Europe, may
well provide matter for reflection. For continuity is the law of human
progress. Advance must ever be won by building on the foundations laid by our
predecessors. The nature of man, as essentially social, involves his subjection
to this law. Pascal has well said,
"C'est grace a là tradition que toute la suite des hommes pendant le cours
de tant de siècles doit être considérée comme un même homme, qui subsiste
toujours et qui apprend continuellement." [N4] The attempt to break with
the past, to dispense with what former generations have accomplished, to pull
down what they have laboriously built and to make a fresh beginning, has ever
ended in failure. No forward step has ever been taken in that way; for so to
act is to violate a fundamental law of our nature. Movements thus initiated
have been retrograde, not progressive.
Yet this is what the men of the
Renaissance strove to do in regard to the Christian civilisation of the middle
ages. They put aside as valueless the hardly-won results of five centuries of
strenuous effort, Of that great revolt against the past, the repudiation of the
traditional philosophy was an integral part.
It was
Descartes who first framed a new synthesis, which in some measure filled the
place once held by the Scholastic system. He, more than any other man, has a
right to be regarded as the father of modern philosophy. And it is not without
its lesson to note that he assigns as his reason for holding the philosophy of
the School to be worthless, that it was the work not of a single mind but of
many minds. [N5]
Since
the days of Descartes, many another philosophical system, idealist,
sensationalist and materialist, has been offered as a solution of the world's
riddles. These systems differ widely among themselves. But one common feature
differentiates them all alike from Scholasticism. They simplify the problem by the omission of some essential
element. This characteristic
seems inseparable from any system which severs itself from that which has been
aptly termed the main stream of European thought. The factors, with which philosophy must deal,
are three -- God, the world, and the human soul. The Scholastic philosophy
faced the problem in its completeness: it shirked no element of it. It is
creationist, thus distinguishing between God as Absolute and Unconditioned
Being on the one hand, and the soul and the world as Contingent Being on the
other. As regards the soul, it is spiritualist, not materialist; and in
relation to the problem of knowledge, it is objectivist, teaching that the
intellect is capable of valid cognition in regard of that external order with
which it is brought into contact by the senses.
[N6]
In the novel philosophies
proposed as substitutes for Scholasticism, sometimes one of the three factors,
some times another, is omitted; and thus the solution remains unsatisfactory
and inadequate. Some, as e.g. Materialism, dispense both with God and the Soul.
In others, as in that Neo-Hegelianism which finds the only conscious life of
the Divine in the human consciousness, God is set aside, and the soul alone is
kept. In others again, as in the philosophy of Berkeley, the world is
eliminated; God and the soul alone remain.
The rapid rise and fall of systems is but
the natural result of this. Men will not long rest satisfied with any scheme
which does not account for all the facts. The pendulum of thought swings with
more, or it may be with less, velocity, but as surely as it is biased by a
single prejudice withholding it from any truth, it will continually change the
curve it traces, and move in succession to all points of the compass.
Of the multiplicity of modern
philosophies, which offer themselves to our acceptance, not one can claim to be
more than the shibboleth of a school. We may recognize and honour to the full,
the great ability of the thinkers who propounded them. .But the task, which
they set themselves, was too great for their powers. As it is not given to any
man to reconstruct the whole of physical science from its first foundations, so
it is not given to any to reconstruct philosophy.
It is not one of the least evils that
have arisen from this state of things, that many now look on philosophy as a
body of doctrines purely relative to a particular age. They would tell you that Philosophical systems
must come and go like the fashions of our dress. That we should not regard them
as more than a convenient mode of representing facts. And that as men at one period
interpreted the universe on a basis of Aristotelianism, so at the present age
they do well to adopt the thought-forms of other systems, and interpret it in
accordance with the doctrines of Kant or of Hegel.
Against the corrosive
scepticism of such a view as this, Neo Scholasticism utters its protest. Philosophy is a science -- the highest of the
sciences. Just as in the natural
sciences, the long line of investigators gradually pushes forward the frontiers
of human knowledge, and age by age increases the number of those truths which
are the permanent conquests of the human mind, so it is in philosophy. Wherever
a real advance has been made, that advance is true for all time. The point has been well put by Professor de
Wulf. "The endeavour," he writes, "of Neo-Scholasticism to
re-establish and plant down deeply among the controversies of the twentieth
century, the principles which animated the Scholasticism of the thirteenth, is
in itself an admission that philosophy cannot completely change from
epoch to epoch: that the truth of seven hundred years ago, is true to-day: that
out and out relativism is an error: that down through all the oscillations of
historical systems, there is ever to be met with a philosophia perennis — asort
of atmosphere of truth pure and undiluted whose bright clear rays have lighted
up the centuries even through the shadows of the darkest and gloomiest clouds. For if reason be aught but a
deceptive aspiration after the absolutely inaccessible, surely whatever has
been brought to light, whatever our ancestors have unearthed, and acquired in
their pioneer labours, cannot have proved entirely worthless to
posterity.'' [N7]
It is not of course to
be supposed that the Neo-Scholasticism of to-day is in all points identical
with the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages. The astronomical physics of the
medieval doctors were theoretically erroneous. Moreover new questions have
arisen, new difficulties been suggested, new discoveries have been made. The
adversaries of to-day are not the adversaries against whom the medieval doctors
were called to contend. In adapting our methods to the needs of the day, we do
not discard the principles of the Scholastics. But Neo-Scholasticism belongs to
the twentieth century, not to the thirteenth; and it employs the weapons of a
new age.
It has seemed advisable
to make this brief apology for the standpoint adopted in this book, since in
England comparatively little is known of the reaction towards Scholasticism
which has taken place in recent years.
Abroad its strength is better understood. The importance of the philosophical works of
men such as Mercier, de Regnon, de Wulf, Nys, Farges, Domet de Vorges, Carra de
Vaux, Mandonnet, Seeberg, Asin y Palacios, is acknowledged by all competent
judges. [N8] In England, for obvious reasons, the movement
has been less felt, But some at least of those who have noticed it have not
underrated its significance. In regard to it Professor Case writes as follows
in his article on Metaphysics in the Encyclopedia Britannica: "One
cannot but feel regret at seeing the Reformed Churches blown about by every
wind of doctrine, and catching at straws, now from Kant, now from Hegel, and
now from Lotze: or at home from Green, Caird, Martineau, Balfour and Ward in
succession, without ever having considered the basis of their faith: while the
Roman Catholics are making every effort to ground a Universal Church on a sane
system of metaphysics. However this may be, the power of the movement is
visible enough from the spread of Thomism over the civilized world."
My
sincerest thanks are due to the Rev. G.S. Hitchcock alike for many valuable
criticisms and suggestions, and for his kindness in reading the
proof-sheets. I must further gratefully
acknowledge my obligations to the Rev. M. Maher and the Rev. T. Rigby. If my work prove of service to those for
whose use it has been written, the result will be in no small measure due to
the assistance accorded to me by these and other friends.
Footnotes
[N1] It is
with pleasure we notice that at Oxford the Summa Theologica of St.
Thomas is now recommended to candidates for theological honours, and his Summa
contra Gentiles has been made an optional subject in the school of Litterae
humaniores. But this welcome change only testifies to the complete neglect
which has so long prevailed.
[N2] Cf. de Wulf, Scholasticism Old and New, trans. by P. Coffey,
p. 45. Picavet, Esquisse d'une histoire des philosophies médiévales.
[N3] The opinions of two authors neither
of whom can be accused of sympathy with Scholasticism may be of interest.
Professor Huxley writes as follows: "The Scholastic philosophy is a
wonderful monument of the patience and ingenuity with which the human mind
toiled to build up a logically consistent theory of the Universe. . . . And
that philosophy is by no means dead and buried as many vainly suppose. On the
contrary, numbers of men of no mean learning and accomplishment and sometimes
of rare power and subtlety of thought, hold by it as the best theory of things
which has yet been stated. And what is still more remarkable, men who speak the
language of modern philosophy, nevertheless think the thoughts of the
Schoolmen." Science and Culture, Lect. 2. Universities, p.
41. Somewhat similarly von
Hartmann speaks of Scholasticism as "a wonderful and close-knit system of
thought, of which none can think lightly save those who have not yet overcome
the bias of party. feeling nor learnt to view things from an objective
standpoint." Die SeIbstzersetzung des Christenthums, p75.
It would not be
difficult to multiply such testimonies from the great minds of every century.
Thus Hugo Grotius writes, 'Ubi in re morali consentiunt [Scholastici] vix est
ut errent.' De Jure Belli et Pacis, Proleg: I 52. cf. also Leibniz, Epist.
ad Thomasium, 49, and Trois Lettres A M. de Montmort, Lettre III. On
the other hand the atheist Diderot says of Scholasticism, 'Cette philosophie a
été une des plus grandes plaies de l'esprit humain." OEuvres, tom. ix.
p. 372.
[N4] Preface
to the treatise Du Vide.
[N5] Descartes, Meditation I.
[N6] Cf de Wulf. Histoire de Ia Philosophie
Médiévale, p. 222. "Toute
théorie négatrice de la spiritualité de l'ame on de la personalité humaine, ou
de la distinction essentielle entre Dieu et la créature, est à nos yeux, subversive
des principes fondamentaux de la scolastique. Voilà pourquoi nous n'hésitons
pas à ranger parmi les adversaires de la scolastique quiconque enseigne le
matérialisme, la migration des â mes, l'athéisme ou le panthéisme."
[N7] De Wulf, Scholasticism Old and New, trans.
by Coffey.
[N8] Mercier, Cours de Philosophic, Louvain
1897-1903; de Régnon, Metaphysic
des Causes, Paris 1886; de Wulf, Histoire de la Philosophie Médiévale Louvaine
1900; Nys, Cosmologie, Louvain
1900; Earges, Etudes
Philosophiques, Paris 1892 - 1907; Domet
de Vorges, Abridge de Metaphysique, Paris 1906; de Vaux, Avicenne, Gazali, Paris 1900, 1904;
Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'averroisme latin au xiiie
Siècle, Fribourg-en-Suisse 1899; Seeberg, Die Thelogie des Johannes Duns Scotus, Leipzig 1900: Asin y Palacios, El
Averroisme teologico de S. Thomas de Aquino, Saragoza 1904. To
these we must add the most valuable work Beitnige zur Geschichte de,
Philosophie des Mittelalters edited by C. Baumker and G. von Hertling,
Munster.
Copyright © E.D.Buckner 2005.