’I consider it nothing less than a misfortune, that the words Concept, General Notion, or any other phrase to express the supposed mental modification corresponding to a general name, should ever have been invented.’

we dissent from his opinion.  To talk of ‘the Concept of an individual,’ however, as Mr Mansel does (pp. 338, 339), is improper and inconsistent with the purpose for which the name is given.

We are more fully in harmony with Mr Mill in his two next chapters (xviii. et seq.) on Judgment and Reasoning; which are among the best chapters in this volume.  He there combats and overthrows the theory of Reasoning laid down by Sir W. Hamilton; but we doubt the propriety of his calling this ‘the Conceptualist theory’ (pp. 367, 368); since it has nothing to do with Conceptualism, in the special sense of antithesis to Realism and Nominalism,—­but is, in fact, the theory of the Syllogism as given in the Analytics of Aristotle, and generally admitted since.  Not merely Conceptualists, but (to use Mr Mill’s own language, p. 366) ’nearly all the writers on logic, taught a theory of the science too small and narrow to contain their own facts.’  Such, indeed, was the theory constantly taught until the publication of Mr Mill’s ’System of Logic;’ the first two books of which corrected it, by arguments which are reinforced and amplified in these two chapters on Judgment and Reasoning, as well as in the two chapters next following—­chaps, xx. and xxi.—­(’Is Logic the Science of the Forms of Thought—­On the Fundamental Laws of Thought.’) The contrast which is there presented, in many different ways, between the limited theory of logic taught by Sir W. Hamilton and Mr Mansel, and the enlarged theory of Mr Mill, is instructive in a high degree.  We consider Mr Mill as the real preserver of all that is valuable in Formal Logic, from the unfortunate consequences of an erroneous estimate, brought upon it through the exaggerated pretensions of logicians.  When Sir W. Hamilton contrasts it pointedly with physical science (of which he talks with a sort of supercilious condescension, in one of the worst passages of his writings, p. 401)—­when all its apparent fruits were produced in the shape of ingenious but barren verbal technicalities—­what hope could be entertained that Formal Logic could hold its ground in the estimation of the recent generation of scientific men?  Mr Mill has divested it of that assumed demonstrative authority which Bacon called ’regere res per syllogismum;’ but he has at the same time given to it a firm root amidst the generalities of objective science.  He has shown that in the great problem of Evidence or Proof, the Laws of Formal Logic, though bearing only on one part of the entire procedure, yet bear upon one essential part, proper to be studied separately:  and that the maintenance of consistency between our affirmations (which is the only special province of Formal Logic), has great importance and value as a part of the process necessary for ascertaining and vindicating their truth, or exposing their character when false or uncertified—­but no importance or value except as a part of that larger exigency.