Common sense--the foundation of logic--first received (to a limited extent) the regularity of an art and the certainty of a science, from the master hand of Aristotle. Impartial scholars, familiar with his writings on logic, allow them to have not only ingenuity but real merit; and his admirers contend that he has been misunderstood by some and abused by others. This is highly probable, as we are certain that when his works were interpreted by the schools, and his logic proclaimed the great text-book of knowledge and the only weapon of truth, 'men's minds, instead of studying nature, were in an endless ferment about occult qualities and imaginary essences; little was talked of but intention and remission, proportion and degree, infinity, formality, quiddity and individuality.'* Logic then was jargon, controversy chicane, and truth a shuttlecock, with which the disputants respectively played, or the object which they mutually disguised. Logic was a labyrinth in which the subtlest lost their Way--a bourne from which the traveller after truth seldom returned. * Account of Lord Bacon's Novum Organon Scientiarum, Lib. of Useful Knowledge, p. 4. A striking illustration of this has been furnished by a candid and distinguished writer--Dr. Reid. 'Of the analytics and of the topics of Aristotle, ingenuousness requires me to confess, that though I have often purposed to read the whole with care, and to understand _what is intelligible_, yet my courage and patience always failed me before I had done. Why should I throw away so much time and painful attention upon a thing of so little real use? If I had lived in those ages when the knowledge of Aristotle's Organon entitled a man to the highest rank in philosophy, ambition might have Induced me to employ upon it some years of painful study; and, less, I conceive, would not be sufficient. Such reflections as these always got the better of my resolution.'*