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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE PRIMARY AXIOMS OF PURE THOUGHT. HAVING defined Logic to be the Science of the Necessary Laws of Pure Thought, our first object must be to ascertain what are the Fundamental and Universal Laws, here called Primary Axioms, to which all Thought, as such, is subject. In the separate consideration, which will come afterwards, of the three classes of Thoughts, ? namely, Concepts, Judgments, and Reasonings, ? we may expect to find Special Laws or Rules which are applicable only to one or two of these divisions. Such Special Rules may or may not be derivative in character; ? that is, they may be either immediate inferences from the Primary Axioms which govern all the products of the Thinking Faculty, or they may be independent, as resting upon their own evidence. Of this hereafter. But our first inquiry must be, whether there are any Axioms of universal applicability, which underlie and govern every act and product of the human Understanding; and, if there are such, to determine their character and significance. If there are such Axioms, they must be few, meagre in import, not susceptible of proof, and recognizable by all as familiar truisms, which have always implicitly directed their thoughts, though perhaps, on account of their very obviousness, they have never been explicitly stated or drawn out into distinct consciousness. They must have these characteristics, because they concern only the Forms of Thought, or the manner of thinking irrespective of whatwe are thinking about; and as these Forms themselves are necessarily limited in number and narrow in significance, the Axioms which underlie them all, and constitute their common features, must be still fewer and poorer in import. They cannot admit of proof, as their truth is presupposed in every act of reason...

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