An introductory text-book of logic - Mellone, Sydney - Rare Books at ...

THE PROBLEMS WHICH WE HAVE RAISED. 331
Logic is formal inasmuch as it considers the general nature
of thinking as a type to be conformed to. 1
A numerous and influential school of logicians have treated
the subject as "formal" in another sense, and one which
cannot be justified. Because Logic deals with Thought
without reference to the details of the objects thought about,
it does not follow as these writers assume that it can treat
of Thought while disregarding all reference of Thought to the
"
real world. Hamilton says (Logic, vol. i. :
p. 16) In an act
of thinking, there are three things which we can discriminate
in consciousness. There is the mind or ego, which exerts or
manifests the thought. There is the object about which we
think, which is called the matter of thought. There is a re
lation between subject and object of which we are conscious,
manifested in some determinate mode or
a relation always
manner, and this is the form of thought. Now of these
three, Logic does not consider either the first or the second."
That is, Logic neglects what we shall see to be the most im
portant characteristic of Thought, to have an objective
reference of some kind. Such a Logic which has been
described as
places
itself within a
"
"
subjectiv.gly._armal
closed circle of "ideas," dealing with ideas without any out
let upon the facts. It is true that this abstraction simplifies
it removes all the harder problems of Logic at
the subject ;
the cost of taking away most of its value as an investigation
of real thinking. In the present treatment of Logic we have
avoided this easy abstraction.
2. The next point of fundamental importance which
has arisen is the relation of the law of Identity to the
Judgment, where the subject and predicate are different,
and yet are united. We shall approach this question
through a criticism of Jevons s
"
Equational Logic," to
which reference has already been made. We have
criticised Jevons s
"
"
Equational view of the propositio?i
(ch. IV. 2) ; but as he has based on this view a theory
of Reasoning, the question needs further examination.
1 The student will see that "formal" in this sense is really equiv
alent to
"
abstract."