THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

48 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
political and economic decay of Greece brought a weakening of the
Hellenic mind and character after Aristotle; but when a new race, after
a millennium of barbaric darkness, found again the leisure and ability
for it
speculation, was Aristotle's "Organon" of logic, translated by
Boethius (470-525 A. D.), that became the very mould of medieval
thought, the strict mother of that scholastic philosophy which, though
rendered sterile by encircling dogmas, nevertheless trained the intellect of
adolescent Europe to reasoning and subtlety, constructed the terminology
of modern science, and laid the bases of that same maturity of mind
which was to outgrow and overthrow the very system and methods which
had given it birth and sustenance.
Logic means, simply, the art and method of correct thinking. It is the
logy or method of every science, of every discipline and every art; and
even music harbors it. It is a science because to a considerable extent the
processes of correct thinking can be reduced to rules like physics and
geometry, and taught to any normal mind; it is an art because by practice
it gives to thought, at last, that unconscious and immediate accuracy
which guides the fingers of the pianist over his instrument to effortless
harmonies. Nothing is so dull as logic, and nothing is so important.
There was a hint of this new science in Socrates' maddening insistence
on definitions, and in Plato's constant refining of every concept. Aristotle's
little treatise on Definitions shows how his logic found nourishment at
this source. "If you wish to converse with, me/' said Voltaire, "define
your terms." How many a debate would have been deflated into a para-
graph if the disputants had dared to define their terms ! This is the alpha
term in
and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important
serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It
is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of
any task.
How shall we proceed to define an object or a term? Aristotle answers
that every good definition has two parts, stands on two solid feet: first,
it 'assigns the object in question to a class or group whose general characteristics
are also its own so man is, first of all, an animal; and
secondly, it indicates wherein the object differs from all the other members
in its class so man, in the Aristotelian system, is a rational animal,
ELS ^'specTiTc
""difference" is that unlike all other animals he is rational
into the
(here is the origin of a pretty legend) . Aristotle drops an object
ocean of its class, then takes it out all dripping with generic meaning,
with the marks of its kind and group; while its individuality and difference
shine out all the more clearly for this juxtaposition with other
objects that resemble it so much and are so different.
Passing out from this rear line of logic we come into the great battlefield
on which Aristotle fought out with Plato the dread question of
"universals" ; it was the first conflict in a war which was to last till our