RAMUS, Peter, was one of the most celebrated professors of the sixteenth century. He was born in Picardy in 1515. A thirst for learning prompted him, when very young, to repair to Paris, and he was admitted as a servant in the college of Navarre. Spending the day in waiting on his masters, and the greater part of the night in study, he made such surprising progress, that, when he took his degree as master of arts, he offered to maintain a doctrine quite opposite to that of Aristotle. This raised him many enemies; and the first two books he published, Institutiones Dialecticae and Aristotelicae Animadversiones, occasioned great disturbances in the university of Paris. The opposition against him was not a little heightened by his deserting the Catholic religion, and professing that of the Reformed. Being thereby forced to retire from Paris, he visited the universities of Germany, and received great honours wherever he went. He returned to France in 1571, and lost his life miserably during the massacre of St Bartholomew’s day. He was a great orator, a man of general learning, and endowed with fine moral qualities. He published many books, which Teissier enumerates. Ramus’s merit in his opposition to Aristotle, and his firmness in undermining his authority, is unquestionably very great. But it has been doubted, and with much reason, whether he was equally successful in his attempts to form a new logical institute. The following general outline of his plan is given in Dr Enfield’s History of Philosophy. “Considering dialectics as the art of deducing conclusions from premises, he endeavours to improve this art, by uniting it with that of rhetoric. Of the several branches of rhetoric, he considers invention and disposition as belonging equally to logic. Making Cicero his chief guide, he divides his treatise on dialectics into two parts, the first of which treats of the invention of arguments, the second of judgments. Arguments he derives not only from what the Aristotelians call middle terms, but from any kind of proposition, which, connected with another, may serve to prove any assertion. Of these he enumerates various kinds. Judgments he divides into axioms, or self-evident propositions, dianoea, or deductions by means of a series of arguments. Both these he divides into various classes; and illustrates the whole by examples from the ancient orators and poets.

“In the logic of Ramus, many things are borrowed from Aristotle, and only appear under new names; and many others are derived from other Grecian sources, particularly from the dialogues of Plato, and the logic of the Stoics. The author has the merit of turning the art of reasoning from the futile speculations of the schools to forensic and common use; but his plan is defective in confining the whole dialectic art to the single object of disputation, and in omitting many things, which respect the general culture of the understanding and the investigation of truth. Notwithstanding the defects of his system, we cannot, however, subscribe to the severe censure which has been passed upon Ramus by Lord Bacon and others; for much is, we think, due to him for having with so much firmness and perseverance asserted the natural freedom of the human understanding. The logic of Ramus obtained great authority in the schools of Germany, Great Britain, Holland, and France; and long and violent contests arose between his followers and those of the Stagyrite, till his fame vanished before that of Descartes.”