
When Scholastic Philosophy ceased to be the subject of systematic study in Protestant U niversities, and was regarded as possessing an historical rather than a scientific interest, there was one branch of it that was treated with less dishonour than the rest. In Ethics and Metaphysics, in Psychology and Natural Theology, the principles handed down by a tradition unbroken for centuries came to be looked upon as antique curiosities, or as merely illustrating the development of human progress and human thought. Thesesciences were either set aside as things of the past, consisting of fine - spun subtleties of no practical value, or else they were reconstructed on an entirely new basis. But with Logic it was different. Its underlying principles and its received method were not so closely and obviously interlaced with the discarded system of theology. It admitted of being more easily brought into apparent harmony with the doctrines of the Reformation, because it had not the same direct bearing on Catholic dogma. It was, moreover, far less formidable to the ordinary student. Those who had no stomach for the Science of Being, were nevertheless quite able to acquire a certain moderate acquaintance with the Science and the Laws of Thought. Men chopped Logic harmlessly, and the Logic they chopped was the traditional Logic of the Schoolmen, with some slight modifications. The. Text-book of Dean Aldrich, which has not yet disappeared from Oxford, is medireval in its phraseology and its method; medireval, too, in its principles, except where an occasional inconsistency has crept in unawares from the new learning. It still talks of "second intentions,". and assumes the existence of an Infima Species, and has throughout the wholesome flavour of the moderate realism of sound philosophy. But this state of things could not last. Sir W. Hamilton, the champion of conceptualism, put forth in his Lectures on Logic a theory of intellectual apprehension quite inconsistent with the traditio
Page Count:
514
Publication Date:
2013-03-30
ISBN-10:
1484001087
ISBN-13:
9781484001080
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