Page:On an Evolutionist Theory of Axioms.djvu/12

5 particular development, which, as far as I know, has been more seriously undertaken in England than in any other country—and that is the reduction of Formal Logic to a sort of mathematical calculus. It is, however, confined to a few specialists. I do not here propose to offer any consideration of its merits.

The idea of Logic as an Organon, that is, as an instrument of scientific discovery, or as subservient to scientific discovery, has been one of the strongest influences in English Logic. It was hoped that herein a trustworthy method might be supplied to those sciences which had not reached the precision of mathematics. This hope so eloquently expressed in the Novum Organum, led ultimately to the preponderance of Induction in our home-grown Logic.

Quite different to this, not home-grown, but due rather to the influence of German Metaphysics, is a treatment of the subject which has established itself of late among us. In this the abstractions of the old Formal Logic have gained new interest. Studied for themselves, and not as elements in an Organon, they are found to suggest important questions about the inner nature of the thought which expresses itself in them. It seems characteristic of this logic that it subjects to a thorough criticism, the distinctions commonly accepted as fixed by Formal Logic and used without question in other departments of English Logic and Philosophy. Its results are at least stimulating.

But it concerns me more at present to point out within the more properly English Logic, another subject which has been well represented. Whether it belongs really to Logic or not—for there is much dispute about the province of Logic—it is most intimately connected with even the narrowest conception of the subject, and has interested students of Logic from the first beginnings of this part of philosophy till now. I mean the inquiry into the origin of what are called axiomatic truths, or first principles.