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The main feature of this logical treatise is to be found in the more thorough investigation of the nature of the notion, in regard to which the views of the school of Locke and Whately are very defective, and the views of the school of Kant and Hamilton altogether erroneous. The Port Royal Logic complains that the part of logic which comprehends the rules of reasoning is regarded as the most important; and maintains that the greater part of the errors of men arises from their reasoning on wrong principles, rather than from their reasoning wrongly from their principles. It is as true of this age as of the seventeenth century, that the attention of logicians has been confined almost entirely to reasoning. I believe that it is the notion which requires at this time to be specially examined. I believe that errors spring far more frequently from obscure, inadequate, indistinct, and confused notions, and from not placing the notions in their proper relation in judgment, than from ratiocination. Even in reasoning, most mistakes proceed from confusion lurking in the apprehensions of the mind. We are in more need, at present, of a new analysis of the notion and the judgment, than of the reasoning process. I have found that in the more thorough evolution of the nature of the notion, especially in the thorough-going separation of the abstract notion from the singular and universal, we have the means of settling the curious questions which have been started in regard to judgment and reasoning in the new analytic. In this treatise, the notion (with the term, and the relation of thought to language) will be found to occupy a larger relative place than in any logical work written since the time of the famous Art of Thinking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Thought and thinking.