Logic for the Millions by A. E. Mander, and: Basic Logic by Raymond J. McCall, Ph. D. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 509 of a highly challenging nature; it arouses reflections on problems one often fails to consider; it is a scholarly achievemt:nt of definite eminence. If one cannot agree either with the general thesis or with many of the particular statements, one nevertheless profits by studying the author's ideas, which surely do not lack originality. Mr. Foss teaches philosophy at Haverford College. He is sure to be a stimulating teacher. And, all our objections notwithstanding, we ought to recognize philosophical seriousness and originality wherever we find them. Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C. RuDOLF ALLERS Logic for the Millions. By A. E. MANDER. Philosophical Library, New York. 1947. Pp. xi, 206 with index. $3.00. Basic Logic. By RAYMOND J. McCALL, PH. D. Barnes and Noble, Inc., New York. 1947. Pp. x, 193. The appearance of two new books on logic, both of which follow more or less the traditional discipline of Aristotle, is a stimulus for the Thomist to consider the present condition of this basic subject. Challenged by a socalled mathematical logic, the Aristotelian-Thomistic mode faces the choice of oblivion before the modem fad for symbols and semantics, or a resurgence to its former and rightful position of training the minds of scientific, philosophic, and theological thinkers. What is needed is a careful evaluation of the current method of teaching the Stagirite's Organon. If these two new books serve this purpose, although neither had such an end even remotely in view, their publication may well mean the return to the true logic of Aristotle and St. Thomas, and not the continued acceptance of some manualist's capsule-size edition of it, with the ingredients , at that, badly mixed. Logic for the Millions, the first book to be considered, is the latest attempt to put rationality on a mass scale into an irrational age. " Thinking is skilled work," observes the author in the Foreword. A. E. Mander is no man to minimize the fact that ability to reason clearly and logically demands constant practice and unremitting effort. Whether Dr. Mander's popularizing will result in correct thinking is the point first to be noted. To those who never took a course in logic and must rely on whatever natural skill they have acquired, Logic for the Millions will have its worthwhile features. Dr. Mander has pages of excellent practical advice to aid in better and clearer thinking. He devotes a section, for example, to what he accurately calls " coloured terms." These terms " not only embody some meaning about the quality or thing referred to ... but also ·510 BOOK REVIEWS suggest our own personal attitude towards it" (pp. 15, 16.) Since such coloring is characteristic of so many of our modern magazines and newspapers , whose adjectives are as important as their nouns, alertness to this subtle type of writing would be a major benefit for the mass of people. The need fo~ defining one's terms, safeguards against false reasoning and shoddy argumentation, a superior treatment of deductive reasoning these are some of the other useful observations made by the author. Unfortunately, they are too occasional and lose value in the general tenor of the book. For those who have studied the Aristotelian-Thomistic logic and know th~ philosophic foundations of this great school of thought, Dr. Mander's book is a combination of logic, psychology, and epistemology, none of which is always treated accurately. The very ease with which this work can be read might deceive one into passing it along as a harmless little volume possessing eonsiderable good material. Closer examination will show that, although it does have some merits, the book has other less noble qualities. To the untrained mind, even for Catholics not imbued with a strong and living faith, Logic for the Millions could have the disasterous effect of blasting any belief in God out of the mind of the reader. Eight times (on pages 23-24, 28, 37, 95, 123, 132, 176) Dr. Mander uses illustrations of faulty reasoning which all conclude to disbelief in the supernatural . The accumulative effect of these examples is to leave the reader with the impression that one would have to be most...