Notes on a Review in the Edinb. Rev. for April 1833 on
Dr Whately's Logic.
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This is one instance out of many which occur, of critics blundering in their
judgement of 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 recommend it - he writes professedly a popular treatise,
a treatise which would not attain its object, if it was other than popular -
the Reviewer finds fault with him because 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
Eth. 1, 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 learned? in the
Glick? Commentators on the Organon, in the Scholastic, Romish?, etc?" - p. 200. Dr W. all
along professes to be analytical. Let the Reviewer attack this principle of teaching
if he will - but let him not pass over the question, + urge? at once 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 {entered above line} to soften technicalities, (which
themselves may be very useful to the advanced student,) to secure substantial
EN