rkness and emptiness. Omitting the
definitions of syllogisms, which are familiar to all collegians, but
too intolerably tedious to be inflicted on my readers, we find a very
unexpected specimen of common sense following the talk about
syllogisms, which embodied Aristotle's ideas of Reason. Here it is:
"Logic is often called the art of reasoning, and many people study it
with a view to mastering an art of correct thinking, hoping thereby to
get an instrument useful in the acquirement of truth. It may be
doubted, however, whether the mind gets much aid in the pursuit of
truth by studying logic." There is no doubt at all about it,--not one
rational individual out of a hundred thousand collegians will confess
that he ever got any benefit in reasoning or in pursuing truth from
Aristotle's syllogistic formula. "All men are mortal--Socrates is a
man, and therefore Socrates is mortal."

Why, then, such a flourish of trumpets over some new trick in playing
with syllogism, when the whole thing is utterly worthless? And the
Professor upsets himself in his own lecture, thus: "If the middle tub
is contained in the big tub, and the little tub is contained in the
middle tub, then the little tub is contained in the big tub." Hegel
says: "Common sense in its reaction against such logical formality and
artificiality turned away in disgust, and was of the opinion that it
could do without such a science as logic." Most true, Philosopher
Hegel, you have absurdities of your own on a gigantic scale, but you
do well to reject the petty absurdities of Aristotle.

How does Prof. Harris rise up from Hegel's fatal blow? He rises like
Antaeus from touching the earth, and triumphantly shows that syllogisms
are the most necessary of all things to humanity in its mundane
existence; that, in fact, we have all been syllogizing ever since we
left the maternal bosom to look at the cradle, the cat, and the dog.
In fact we never could have grown up to manhood, much less to be
Concordian philosophers, if we had not been syllogizing all the days
of our life, and, indeed, it is probable we shall continue syllogizing
to all eternity, in the next life, if we have any growth in knowledge
at all. Blessed be the memory of Aristotle, the great original and
unrivalled discoverer of the syllogism, by means of which all human
knowledge has been built up, and "blessed be the man (as Sancho Panza
said) who first invented sleep," by which we are relieved, to rest
after