Note 101 — THE MONIST.

J. S. Mill had in the first edition of his Logic decisively taken an objective conception of chance and probability; but in his second edition he had become puzzled and had retracted, leaving that chapter, and with it his whole logic, a melancholy wreck, over which the qualified reader sighs, “And this once seemed intelligible!” Venn in the first edition of his book set forth the same objective conception with great clearness, and for that he was entitled to high praise, notwithstanding his manifest inadequacy to the problems treated. But in his second edition, he too has fallen away from his first and correct view, and has adopted a theory which I shall some day show to be untenable. Venn’s whole method in logic, as well as his system, is in my opinion of the weakest.