Logic cannot dispense with the light afforded by its history so long as
counter-solutions of the same fundamental problems continue to hold the
field. A critical review of some of the chief types of logical theory,
with a view to determine development, needs no further justification.
Logic arose, at least for the Western world, in the golden age of Greek
speculation which culminated in Plato and Aristotle. There is an Indian
logic, it is true, but its priority is more than disputable. In any case
no influence upon Greek thought can be shown. The movement which ends in
the logic of Aristotle is demonstrably self-contained. When we have
shaken ourselves free of the prejudice that all stars are first seen in
the East, Oriental attempts at analysis of the structure of thought may
be treated as negligible.
It is with Aristotle that the bookish tradition begins to dominate the
evolution of logic. The technical perfection of the analysis which he
offers is, granted the circle of presuppositions within which it works,
so decisive, that what precedes, even Plato's logic, is not unnaturally
regarded as merely preliminary and subsidiary to it. What follows is
inevitably, whether directly or indirectly, by sympathy or by
antagonism, affected by the Aristotelian tradition.