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by experience, and where our instinctive reasoning power begins to lose its self-confidence; as when we question what we ought to think about psychical research, about the gospels, about difficult questions of political economy, about the constitution of matter; or when we inquire by what methods we can most speedily advance our knowledge of what matters.
But, as I said before, were direct applications of logic, such as these, never useful, instead of being frequently so, as they are, yet its indirect utility, through the useful conceptions with which it supplies us, would be immense.
Meantime, its highest and greatest values of all is that it affords us an understanding of the processes of reasoning. That the Platos are thoroughly right in that estimate will be more and more impressed upon our convictions as our acquaintance with the science grows.
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On the other hand, we shall find reason to maintain, with Auguste Comte, that a sound theory cannot be sound unless it be susceptible of applications, immediate or remote, whether it be good economy so to apply it, or not. This is perhaps no more true of logic than of other theories; simply because it it perfectly true of all. But there is a special reason why it is more important to bear this point in mind in logic. Namely, logic is the theory of right reasoning, of what reasoning ought to be, not of what it is. On that account, it used to be called a directive science, but of late years, Überweg's {Refers to Friedrich Ueberweg (1826-1871)} adjective normative* has been generally substituted. It might be
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* The latter word is not, at least to one individual whom I [w....] particularly pleasing. The verb, normo, to square, is in the dictionary, but what ordinary reader of Latin can remember having met with it? Yet if the presumable motive for the substitution of the new adjective, namely, its avoidance of an apparent implication in directive that logic is a a mere art or practical science, approves itself to us. The XXth century would laugh at us if we were too squeamish about the word's legitimacy of birth.
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that a normative science, in view of the economies of the case, should be quite useless for any practical application. Still, whatever fact had no bearing upon a conceivable application to practice would be entirely impertinent to such a science. It would be easy enough,--much too easy,--to marshal a goodly squadron of treatises on logic each of them swelled out with matter foreign matter un to any conceivable applicability, until, like a corpulent man, it can no longer see what it is standing {missing: [in]}, and the reader loses all clear view of the true problems of the science. But since the relation of the theory of logic to conceivable applications of it will, by and by, come up for clever examination, we need now consider it further.
§2. Of Minute Accuracy
How shall the theory of right meaning be investigated? The nature of the subject must be an important factor in determining the method. Before
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touching that, however, suppose we ask how, in the roughest sense, any theory ought to be investigated. Am I wrong in thinking I catch a whisper from good sense, that, for one item of the reply, a theory should be investigated carefully and minutely? Yet, strange to say, such a recommendation would be in plain contradiction to prevailing opinion. A month does not pass, scarce a fortnight will pas, without my attention being drawn to some new discussion by a man of strength relating to some broad, far-reaching question of science or philosophy. Every such dissertation will be sure to refer to principles of reasoning which are more or less contested. Upon the correctness of these the whole question hinges. How, then, do I find these logical principles are sought to be established? By the same severe and minute examination which the same author would approve in regard to a question
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of physics? Never: I am very sure he would condemn such piddling minuteness as inappropriate to so broad a question. He proceeds slap-dash, depicting the logical situation as in a black board diagram rather than as in a critically accurate anatomical plate. For the most part, he has but the vaguest notion of how he has come by his principles. He has gathered them casually, after the custom of amateurs. It might seem to behoove every man who has occasion to lay down principles of reasoning in a grave scientific discussion to be more than an amateur in logic. Voluminous writers, however, on logic there are who deliberately adopt vague substitutes for any definite method of establishing principles of reasoning.
When I was beginning my philosophical reading, my father, Benjamin Peirce, forced me to recognize