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his knowledge in reference to) the sixteen great topics or heads of discussion. These, as enumerated by Gotama are – (1) proof; (2) the objects of proof; (3) doubt; (4) motive; (5) the illustration or example for discussion; (6) the final assertion; (7) the enumeration of the five members of the final assertion; (8) confirmatory argument; (9) the conclusion, the defined judgment; (10) the objection; (11) controversy; (12) deceptive counter argument; (13) apparent reason or sophism; (14) fraud or willfully deceptive argument, ruse; (15) futile argument or self-contradictory counter argument; (16) conclusive refutation. Inspection of these at once shows that they represent stages in dialectic or in the process of clearing up knowledge by discussion. The generalia, i.e., the kinds of proof, described as four in number sense-perception, inference (either from cause to effect, from effect to cause, or from community of nature, i.e., in a wide sense, analogy), comparison (analogy in a stricter significance), tradition, – and the things about which proof may be exercised, under which a twelvefold division is given by Gotama, and enlarged in endless detail by his commentators, who introduce thereunder much of Kanada's system, are first laid down as the basis for the whole. Then follows (Nos. 3-6) the progress from doubt, which first calls for reasoning or proof, through motive, to position of the problem in the form of an example or case, and to the general assertion, as having valid grounds. The analysis of the grounds of assertion is then given, and here we have what corresponds more particularly to the syllogism as known to us. Five members are signalized: – (1) the thesis or proposition to be proved; (2) the reason, or intermediate ground by which the subject of the proposition is linked on to an explanatory principle; (3) the explanatory principle; (4) the application of this explanatory principle; (5) the statement of the conclusion as following from the application. Thus, in the example usually given – (1) thesis, this mountain is fiery; (2) intermediate ground, because it smokes; (3) explanatory principle, whatever smokes is fiery, as, for instance, a hearth; (4) application, therefore this mountain is fiery; (5) statement of conclusion, the mountain, then, is fiery, because it smokes. There can be no doubt that in this some what unsystematic arrangement we have the outlines of syllogistic argument. Considerable obscurity, however, rests over the third member, and it is only partially cleared up when we proceed to the next topic, which may perhaps be translated confirmatory argument. Here the essence of the argument appears to be a regress from the known mark to the fundamental quality from which it follows. Thus, e.g., if it were said the mountain is not fiery, then the argument would be adduced, but the mountain smokes, and what is not fiery does not smoke. Apparently there is involved the assumption that the mark is a necessary consequence of the primary quality, but the exposition is obscure, and, doubtless, connects itself with the principles of causal connexion recognized by Hindu thinkers. (See Williams, as below, pp. 73-4).
When the conclusion has thus been confirmed, when the negation of the ground has been shown to fail in explaining the observed fact, the thesis may be stated in an absolute and definitive form (topic 9). The remaining seven topics are then concerned with the discussion which may arise when an opponent brings forward objections to the conclusion. This he must do by positing his antithesis (10), whereupon issue may be joined (11). Should the adversary be unable to establish his antithesis, he may resort to deceit, bringing forward arguments, illogically arranged and devoid of force (12), which soon leads to the employment of sophisms (13) or merely apparent arguments, and even to deceitful ruses (14). Under these topics the Nyâya signalizes and discusses various well-known forms of fallacy. The destruction of all these fallacious arguments reduces the opponent to the employment of futile, irrelevant responses, which undermine his own position (15), and the exposure of which completes his discomfiture and reduces him to silence (16).
Expositions of this dialectic system are not yet available in such kind and amount as would enable one to do full justice to it. Evidently much patience and a very considerable knowledge of the current philosophical view would be requisite in order to appreciate at their true worth many apparently formal, and in some cases dubious, divisions. Of accounts which may be consulted the following seem the more important: – Colebrooke's Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus, from which the expositions in Ritter (Ges. d. Phil., iv..382 sq.), Hegel (Werke, xiii. 161-167), and Cousin (Histoire Générale, Leçon ii.) are taken; Ward's Account of the History, Literature, and Religion of the Hindoos (4 vols. 1811; later editions, with title altered, in 1815, 1817, 1821); Windischmann, Philosophie im Fortgang der Weltgeschichte (1834), specially pp. 1895-1920; M. Muller, appendix to Thomson's Laws of Thought; Rosenkranz, Die Modificationen der Logik (1846), pp. 184-97; Williams, Indian Wisdom, pp. 71-88; St Hilaire, articles "Indiens," "Gotama," "Nyâya," "Kanada," in the Dictionnaire Philosophique, and translation, with commentary, of part of Gotama's "Sutras," in the Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, tom. iii.
NOTE C.
Ramus. – The logical theories of Ramus acquired for a brief period a factitious importance from .their connexion with the general revolt against Aristotelianism, and with the Protestant struggle against the Roman Catholic authority. In themselves they have no particular value, nor indeed much originality, and the exposition of them by their author, always rather literary than philosophic, adds nothing of strength or interest. In comparison with the Aristotelian analysis of the forms and methods of thinking, the few alterations of statement, and generally the thin residuum of logical theory, which characterize Ramist work, appear as singularly insignificant. Nor have any of the special peculiarities of the Ramist logic exercised influence on the history of logical doctrines. The keenness of the controversy which raged in so many of the centres of learning between the Aristotelians and the total or partial Ramists is explicable only as having reference to differences which were merely symbolized by the apparent difference in logical doctrine.
In the Protestant universities and seminaries generally the Ramist logic obtained, and for some time kept, a firm footing. In Scotland, through Melville. Buchanan, and the earl of Murray, who had been a pupil of Ramus, his system was installed as the orthodox staple of logical training, and such records as remain of Scottish university education during the troubled 16th century would undoubtedly exhibit the traces of this new movement. In England, Cambridge alone, always disposed to reject the authority of Aristotle, and generally more open to new ideas than the sister university, was a stronghold of Ramism, and, apart from special works of Ramist tendency, the influence of the new doctrine is discernible in the writings of more than one Cambridge alumnus. William Temple, a friend of Sir Philip Sidney, and an official of the university, published a volume of Scholia in Rami Dialecticam, 1591; George Downam, prælector on logic, wrote commentaries In Petri Rami Dialecticam, 1606; and Milton, in 1672, expanded the Dialectica in his Artis Logicæ Plenior Institutio. Marlowe's Faustus, and his Massacre of St Bartholomew, show how familiar Ramist phraseology and the personality of Ramus must have been to an alumnus of Cambridge, while Bacon, with well-grounded objection to much of the Ramist method, expounds the system of logic with unmistakable reference to the Ramist principles and method of arrangement. There is a monograph on Ramus by Ch. Waddington with a good bibliography – Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée): sa Vie, ses Écrits, et ses Opinions, Paris, 1856 – and a slighter work, mainly biographical, by Ch. Desmaze (P. Ramus, Professeur au Collége de France: sa Vie, ses Écrits, sa Mort, 1515-72, Paris, 1804). In Lipenius (Bibliotheca Realis, s. v. "Ramus") will be found a long list of writings for and against the Ramist logic. The history of the movement is also given in Buhle (Gesch. d. neuern Phil., ii. 680-702), Tennemann (Gesch. d. Phil., ix. pp. 420-42), Du Boulay (His. Univer. Paris, tom, iv.), Crevier (His. de l'Univ. de Paris, vol. v.), in Jo. Hermannus ab Elswich (Schediasma de varia Aristotelis in scholis Protestantium fortuna, §§ 21-29), De Launoy (De Varia Aristot. in Acad. Paris. fortuna, cap. xiii.), and in Bayle (Dictionnaire, s. v. "Ramus"). (R. AD.)
LOGOS. This term is one of the most constant factors in ancient speculation. As it is double-sided, however, expressing both reason and word, the conceptions which it covers differ widely. Taken broadly the doctrine of the Logos may be said to have run in two parallel courses – the one philosophical, the other theological; the one the development of the Logos as reason, the other the development of the Logos as word; the one Hellenic, the other Hebrew.
1. To the Greek mind, which saw in the world a (
Greek characters), it was natural to regard the world as the product of reason, and reason as the ruling principle in the world. So we find a Logos doctrine more or less prominent from the dawn of Hellenic thought to its eclipse. It rises in the realm of physical speculation, passes over into the territory of ethics and theology, and makes its way through at least three well-defined stages. These are marked off by the names of Heraclitus of Ephesus, the Stoics, and Philo.
It acquires its first importance in the theories of Heraclitus. There it is intimately associated with the dominant ideas of a flux in all things, and of fire as the material substrate or primary form of existence. On the one hand the Logos is identified with (Greek characters) and connected with (Greek characters), which latter seems to have the function of correcting deviations from the eternal law that rules in things. On the other hand it is not positively distinguished either from the ethereal fire, or from the (Greek characters) and the (Greek characters) according to which all things occur. In consistency with his hylozoic doctrine Heraclitus holds that nothing material can be thought of without this Logos, but he does not conceive the Logos itself to be immaterial. Whether it is regarded as in any sense possessed of intelligence and consciousness is a question variously answered. But there is most to say for the negative. This Logos is not one above the world or prior to it, but in the world and inseparable from it. Man's soul is a part of it. It is relation, therefore, as Schleiermacher expresses it, or reason, not speech or word. And it is objective, not subjective, reason. The process of transition between opposites, in which all things are involved, is a process according to orderly relations and definite measures, and the Logos is the eternal principle of this world-process which shows itself in the form of a constant conflict between opposites. Like a law of nature, objective in the world, it gives order and regularity to the movement of things, and makes the system rational.[1]
Between Heraclitus and the Stoics comparatively little was done in developing a special Logos doctrine. With Anaxagoras a conception entered which gradually triumphed over that of Heraclitus, namely, the conception of a supreme, intellectual principle, not identified with the world but independent of it. This, however, was vow, not Logos. In the Platonic and Aristotelian systems, too, the Logos appears. But it is subordinate to other more distinctive conceptions, and lacks the definiteness of a doctrine. With Plato the term selected for the expression of the principle
- ↑ Cf. Schleiermacher's Herakleitos der Dunkle, &c.; Bernays's Heraclitea; Gladisch's Heracleitos und Zoroaster.
