An Elementary Handbook of Logic

Father Toohey's manual is an excellent text-book for the classrooms of academics, colleges and seminaries, and it would be advisable for all teachers of logic to consider its advantages before deciding on the book they will use in their courses of next year. It is brief and clear. It avoids diffuseness and jejuneness; and while covering the entire subject in a way quite sufficient for the student's needs, it leaves full freedom to the teacher for personal initiative and development. It is essentially a textbook for classroom work, written by the professor of logic in Georgetown University, with whom the science of logic, long before he began to teach it, had been a hobby. It is designed especially to meet the difficulties, requirements and turn of mind of American students. A minute outline of chapters and an exhaustive index, covering thirteen pages, of topics, facilitate reference, which is made still easier by a judicious employment of black-faced type for definitions when they first occur, and by the use of numbers for paragraphs, to which the student is constantly sent back, as occasion requires. Throughout the volume's 241 pages extreme care has been taken with the wording of the text, and the examples, old and new, serve as excellent illustrations. The subject-matter, which it has been the fashion to consider cut and dried and stereotyped beyond the possibility of change, has an element of novelty which is refreshing. The laws of thought are, of course, enunciated as heretofore, but on the explanation of them Father Toohey has not feared to show considerable originality. These divergences from stock statements stimulate discussion, clear away inconsistencies and on further reflection commend themselves with growing insistence. Such, for example, are the distinction between the act and process of inference, the treatment of the predicables and categories, the chapter on education and the remarks on the modal proposition. The most distinctive parts of the book are the chapters which treat of the categorical syllogism. The author has found that his new theory simplifies the subject in a remarkable way for the student. The explanation of fallacies, which was written with the distinct purpose of giving a name and a description to the methods of attack made on the Church, is very valuable; and the discussion of the author's views on the distribution of the predicate, to say the least, challenges serious attention. The book has already been adopted in several higher institutions of learning. -America, Volume 19 [1918]