France," and Dulaure's "History of Paris"; which is not unlikely to be Mill's. The Corn Laws is one of his subjects, and on this there is an article of thirty pages in the twelfth number (October, 1826). In the following number (January, 1827), there is a second article, referring to Mr. Canning's measure recently brought forward (1826). The concluding article of this number I believe to be Mill's; it deals with a recent article in the "Quarterly," on "Greek Courts of Justice," and is in his happiest vein. It retorts cleverly upon the exaggerations of the "Quarterly," by finding in the English legal practice abuses equal to the worst that the reviewer discovers in the Athenian courts. In the sixteenth number there is a review of Goodwin's "History of the Commonwealth," which seems to follow up the review of Hume.
The article on Whately in January, 1828, was the outcome of the discussions in Grote's house the previous year. It is a landmark not merely in the history of his own mind, but in the history of Logic. His discussion of the utility of Logic, at a time when Syllogism was the body and essence of it, hits the strongest part of the case better than the famous chapter on the "Functions of the Syllogism"; I mean the analyzing of an argument, with a view to isolating the attention on the parts. The discussion of the Predicables is an improvement upon Whately. He even praises, although he does not quite agree with, Whately's attempt to identify Induction with Syllogism, and gives him credit for illustrating, but not for solving, the difficulty of our assenting to general propositions without seeing all that they involve. His view of the desiderata of Logic is thus expressed: "A large portion of the philosophy of general Terms still remains undiscovered; the philosophical analysis of Predication, the explanation of what is the immediate object of belief when we assent to a proposition, is yet to be performed; and, though the important assistance rendered by general language, not only in what are termed the exact sciences, but even in the discovery of physical facts, is known and admitted, the nature of the means by which it performs this service is a problem still to a great extent unsolved." On the whole, it can not be said that he had, as yet, made much progress in Logic, even with the assistance of the debates in Threadneedle Street. The real advances apparently remained to be worked out by his own unassisted strength during the next twelve years. I may remark, in conclusion, that I think he greatly overrates the value of Whately's book: "The masterly sketch which he has given of the whole science in the analytical form, previously to entering upon a more detailed exposition of it in the synthetical order, constitutes one of the greatest merits of the volume, as an elementary work." If, instead of merits, defects were substituted, the sentence would be, in my judgment, very near the truth. The result of the arrangement was singularly confusing to myself, when I first read the book; and the testimony of all subsequent writers on Logic must be held as against it, for not one, to my knowledge, has ever
