The Works of Vicesimus Knox, D D

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER XX. My Lord, The time you save by shortening the period of your application to metaphysics, may be usefully devoted to the more valuable parts of Logic. Mistake me not so much as to suppose that I despise Logic in general. It is only the scholastic part which I wish you to neglect. Rational logic,...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER XX. My Lord, The time you save by shortening the period of your application to metaphysics, may be usefully devoted to the more valuable parts of Logic. Mistake me not so much as to suppose that I despise Logic in general. It is only the scholastic part which I wish you to neglect. Rational logic, or common sense improved by rules, is a most valuable art; and I should be glad to observe in you a taste for its cultivation. Logic, you know, is divided into four parts. The first teaches to conceive clear ideas of single objects: the second, to form a judgment on them: the third, to argue from them conclusively: and the fourth, to arrange them in the best and most lucid order. Nothing can contribute more than this, to accomplish the orator and the man. Logic, divested of its pedantic and unnecessary subtilties, is very justly termed an instrument; or as Aristotle termed it, an oryanon, to facilitate the attainment of all other sciences. After reading Sanderson or Watts, form in your own mind a little logical system for daily use. Accustom yourself to conceive clearly, to judge or affirm on solid grounds, to reason irrefragably, and to methodize in the most convenient and luminous arrangement. Carrying this organon, as philosophers call it, or instrument, about you, like your watch, or your eyeglass, you will find it of perpetual service. It will give you an advantage in the transaction of all business, whether public or private. Few men possessit. Many have indeed read the common treatises on Logic; but they were either puzzled or disgusted, or both, with the dull subtilties of the schools, and never disentangled the good from the bad, so as to be able to avail themselves of it after leaving the university. You will extract the kernel, and throw away the she...