Logic Taught by Love/Preface
Preface
This book will seem to some a mere medley. Is it a text-book of Logic, a pious exhortation, or a treatise on Mythology? Why cannot the author choose some plan and stick to it?
For this reason (among others): Part of the very object of the work is to call attention to the fact that our life is being disorganized by the monotony of our methods of teaching. To escape this monotony, we are driven to seek the needful variety in multiplicity of subjects of study and in conflict of opinion. Variety we must have; but we could get it more safely by alternation of attitude and variety of treatment.
The most important truths are those which no one disputes; but they are now too much forgotten, precisely because, not being disputed, and being monotonously taught, they are found uninteresting. In old days these truths were impressed on the mind by giving variety to the manner of their exhibition.
An eminent Logician says of his own work: "I am proud of having written a book on Logic, in which it is proved, among other things, that the Logic of the heart has its own validity." I should be proud if I could convince a single teacher that the isolation of any mode of thought is misleading; and that no system of Logic can be valid unless it is able to focus together various rays of Truth.
The substance of this Volume appeared in Articles in the Inquirer, Journal of Education, Jewish Chronicle and Jewish World of London, the Occident of Chicago, and the American Israelite of Cincinnati.
My best thanks are due to the owners of the long-lost Wedgwood MSS. (recovered in 1882), for confiding them for a time to me. These MSS. would not, it is thought, appeal to a sufficiently wide circle of readers to make the publication of them desirable; but they supply the missing link between the Pulsation-Logic of Gratry and Boole, and the most advanced medical psychology of our time.
Though I should be sorry to seem to commit any one to my views, I cannot refrain from also expressing my gratitude to those who have kindly helped me in tracing the effects of Jewish discipline in promoting personal and racial longevity; amongst others, the Principals of Jews' College and the Jews' Free School; the Editors of the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish World; and, last but not least, my kind and valued friend, Mr. Lazarus, late Beadle of the Berkeley Street Synagogue.
The descriptions of lessons on elementary mathematics which occur on pp. 117, 118, 119 and 122 appear also in "The Preparation of the Child for Science."