Deductive Logic
9781465558510
pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
One critic, who was kind enough to look at this book in manuscript, recommended me to abandon the design of Publishing it, on the ground that my logic was too like all other logics; another suggested to me to cut out a considerable amount of new matter. The latter advice I have followed; the former has encouraged me to hope that I shall not be considered guilty of wanton innovation. The few novelties which I have ventured to retain will, I trust, be regarded as legitimate extensions of received lines of teaching. My object has been to produce a work which should be as thoroughly representative of the present state of the logic of the Oxford Schools as any of the text-books of the past. The qualities which I have aimed at before all others have been clearness and consistency. For the task which I have taken upon myself I may claim one qualification—that of experience; since more than seventeen years have now elapsed since I took my first pupil in logic for the Honour School of Moderations, and during that time I have been pretty continuously engaged in studying and teaching the subject. This work has had the great advantage of having been revised, while still in manuscript, by Mr. Alfred Robinson, Fellow of New College, to whom I cannot sufficiently express my obligation. I have availed myself to the full of the series of criticisms which he was kind enough to send me. As some additions have been made since then, he cannot be held in anyway responsible for the faults which less kindly critics may detect. For the examples at the end I am mainly indebted to others, and to a large extent to my ingenious friend, the Rev. W. J. Priest of Merton College
