Page:Chance, love, and logic - philosophical essays (IA chancelovelogicp00peir 0).pdf/39

 *trine of social consciousness, the mind of the community, and the process of interpretation. It may be that a great deal of the similarity between the thoughts of these two men is due to common sources, such as the works of Kant and Schelling; but it is well to note that not only in his later writings but also in his lectures and seminars Royce continually referred to Peirce's views.

The ground for the neo-realist movement in American philosophy was largely prepared by the mathematical work of Russell and by the utilization of mathematics to which Royce was led by Peirce. The logic of Mr. Russell is based, as he himself has pointed out, on a combination of the work of Peirce and Peano. In this combination the notation of Peano has proved of greater technical fluency, but all of Peano's results can also be obtained by Peirce's method as developed by Schroeder and Mrs. Ladd-Franklin. But philosophically Peirce's influence is far greater in insisting that logic is not a branch of psychology, that it is not concerned with merely mental processes, but with objective relations. To the view that the laws of logic represent "the necessities of thought," that propositions are true because "we can not help thinking so," he answers: "Exact logic will say that C's following logically from A is a state of things which no impotence of thought alone can bring about."[21] "The question of validity is purely one of fact and not of thinking It is not in the least the question whether, when the premises are accepted by the mind, we feel an impulse to accept the conclusion also.