Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/128



[ABBREVIATIONS. — ''Am. J. Ps. = American Journal of Psychology; Ar. f. G. Ph. = Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie; Ar. de Phy. = Archiv de Physiologie; Int. J. E. = International Journal of Ethics; Phil. Mon. = Philosophische Monatshefte; Phil. Stud. = Philosophische Studien; Rev. Ph. = Revue Philosophique; V. f. W. Ph. = Vierteljahrschrift für Wissenschaftliche Philosophie; Z. f. Ph. = Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik.'']

The writer thinks that the contradiction in which the intellectual life of to-day is entangled is due to the fact that science has got far enough along so that its negative attitude towards previous codes of life is evident, while its own positive principle of reconciliation is not yet evident. The prevailing influence in logical theory ought to be to reckon with the scientific spirit, and the essential problem of logic ought to be the consideration of the various typical methods and guiding principles which thought assumes in its effort to detect, master, and report fact. But the present position of logic is this, that any attempt to state in general or to work out in detail, the principle of the intrinsic and fruitful relation of fact and thought which science unconsciously employs in practice, seems metaphysical or even absurd. The paper will try to discover why this is so.

The chief cause is the superstition of formal logic, the fons et origo malorum in philosophy. The assumption of formal logic that thought has a nature of its own independent of facts or subject-matter, and forms of its own which are rigid frames into which the fact must be set, is a bit of scholasticism, the last struggle of medievalism to hold thought in subjection to authority. The two main forces that have been at work against the formulae of formal logic, are inductive or empirical logic on the one hand and the so-called transcendental logic on the other. Although the influence of the inductive logic has been the greater in sapping the authority of syllogistic logic, it does not yet furnish us with the needed theory of thought or fact. Firstly, Mill's theory is simply a theory regarding the formation of the major premise and falls to the ground with the incorrect assumptions of the syllogistic it presupposes. In its 112