UCD Letters

Notes on a Review inf the Edinb. Rev. for April 1833 on Dr Whatley's Logic.

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This is one instance out of many which occur, of critics blundering in their judgment on a work, from not having taken the trouble to consider its real object. An author writes with a certain drift, to illustrate certain doctrines, etc., he is reviewed on an arbitrary hypothesis of the Critic's. Dr. W. sees a science neglected, he wishes to recomment? it, he writes professedly a popular treatise, a treatise which would not attain its object if it was other than popular. The Reviewer find fault with him it is not more rigidly scientific, and because it is not more completely identified with the actual Logic of the Ancients, because i.e. it is not that which it never pretended to be. Vainly has Aristotle warned us that accuracy is to be sought only ἐφ᾽ ὅσον οἰκεῖον τῇ μεθόδῳ. καὶ γὰρ τέκτων καὶ γεωμέτρης διαφερόντως ἐπιζητοῦσι τὴν ὀρθήν etc. Eth. i,7. Thus the Reviewer accuses Dr W. of a want of erudition "Not one seems to have studied the logical treatises of Aristotle; all are unread in the Greek Commentators on the Organon, in the Scholastic, Ramist, etc. - p. 200. Dr W. all along professes to be analytical. Let the Reviewer attack this principle of teachin[g] if he will - but let him not pass over the question, & urge? at one as a fault that Dr W. does not set the student at once to learn by rote a string of tech nical terms. The very object of the Treatise is to soften technicalities (which themselves may be very useful to the advanced student.) to secure substantial accuracy, and to fix the sciences in the mind on a common sense founda tion. The Treatise is professedly upon "The Elements of Logic." - Look at p. 42 and you find is said in the note. "The learner may perhaps be startled &c" - Strange to say, the Review admits that such is the nature of the work. When he talks of "a new life" being "suddenly communicated to the aspiring study etc.

The Reviewer attacks Dr W.'s division of Logic into Science and Art. He quotes Dr W. as sating "that Logic has been in general regarded merely as an art" etc. Now surely this has been the popular notion of it; and if so, what is the use of going on to speak of Plato, the Arabian Schoolmen, Thomists etc. p. 203.

The distinction made p. 206 not between Logica docens & L. untens is a remar kable instance of πϵριϵργϵια.