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the Text-Book on which the Norman monks lectured at Cambridge . Ingulf states himself to have studied Aristotle , and to have excelled in logic . It is probable that he studied Aristotle in Porphyry or Boetius .
That this popular art made no one wiser , and that the questions most commonly discussed by it , were useless to every class of society , our reasonable John of Salisbury remarked . Even Becket was admonished by him 8
to avoid them . And the sportive Mapes , ever looking around him with an eye prompt to notice the ridiculous , exhibits , with correct satire , Aristotle as beating the air , and logic as raving with agitated lips . We can now have no hesitation to characterize the
logical works of Aristotle , as the most laborious , the most obscure , and the most useless trifles of ancient philosophy . As the teacher of a system of verbal disputation distinct from the acquisition of knowledge , he has been
singularly successful . But of his method , it has never been recorded that it has led the mind to one beneficial discovery , or established one true theory . It is merely the organization of eternal controversy . It is a moveabie mechanism of words , whose active
6 Ingulf , Hist . Pp . 62 and 73 . 7 Metalogicus , 1 . 2 . c . 6 . 8 See Becket , Ep . 1 . 1 . p . 47 . He says , Scbolaris exercitatio interdmn scientiam an get ad tumorem .
* > jEst Aristoteles verberans aera —• Concussis aestuat in labiis logfica . Le Sage ' description of his logical students is a good commentary on Mapes . Nos yeux etoient plein de fureur et nos bouches ecumantes . On nous devout piutot prendre pour de * possedes que pour des philosophes . —We may learn how Mapes was estimated by his contemporaries , from an unpublished work of Giraldus . He says of him 5 " It is time that I should turn ad sales saporifero sapiential sale conditos , urbanasque reprehensiones Oxomien . Archidi . W . Mapi . —Lib . de distinc . MS . Cotton Lib . Tib . B . 13 . 10 Hugo St . Victor , who died 1140 , in classing philosophy under three heads , Logica , Ethica and Theorica , while he allots to his theorica , physics and mathematics , very sensibly ascribes to logic only wordsu Logica de voeibus ; ethica de moribus ; theoriea de rebus tractat . " In Spec . Eccl . ap . Bib . Mag . vol . x . p . 1363 ,
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powers no use can exhaust , no hosti lity defeat . But this speciousqUalit ' interested our ancestors ; and we m J admit that they were for a time bene fited by its adoption . They had no knowledge to make a better use of and they were surrounded by a super * stition becoming tyrannical , perhaps insensibly to itself , whose tendency was to paralyze their faculties , and to extinguish judgment in slavish credulity . But the Aristotelian loeic w *
a weapon of the busy mind , always hewing the fetters that were ever forging to confine it Though it exercised itself on words , the exercise was freedom , the activity was health , because it educated men to think and
argue ; and argument was victory against political theology . As Providence took care that true knowledge should pour in at the same period , Aristotle , pursued by experiments philosophy , became a master a . ; wavs
tending to make scholars wiser ttan himself . His tuition certainly gene rated vivacity and aouteness of intellect : and mind , thus excited , fastening
afterwards on better knowledge , perceived the inanity of its former preceptor , and emancipated itself from his shackles by the very vigour which he had created . Persons were
perpetually deserting the logical schools , to cultivate more satisfactory knowledge ; and logic , thus com bined and governed by physical science , operated at last only to improve
11 How sensible the zealous friends of the Romish system were of this , may infer from Peter , the Abbot Cellensis , who flourished about 1180 . In his Mystics Expositio , dedicated to our John of Salisbury , he says , " The Aristotelian gf «»« is not to be planted near the altar , lest ire should darken the sacraments of fei »» i > . » endless and superfluous disquisitions , wn » c are useful only to the subversion ot tne hearers . " Bib . Mag . vol . ix . f > . 919 , is The emphatic words of St . Bern * J shew the eagemesa with winch tbe a style of reasoning was received , a » important effects . « Their books JJ , their darkness invades cities and cas j they pass from nation to nation , trow ^ kingdom to another . A new gospe 1 bricated for peoples and states ; a " j ( l is proposed , a very different ( ° ™ f ™ laid , for that which was anciently blished . " Abel . Epist . p SW- ^ » 3 See Friar Bacow , w 1 »» ° ?™ gu « .
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IS 4 History of the Scholastic Philosophy .
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the sciences , by w ; hich the ^ intellect may iudefe between the false and the true . P . 1 .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1815, page 134, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1758/page/6/
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