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My main concern is to show that that line of reflexion which I call the Neglected Argument is an argument, and a particularly strong one, of the kind with which every positive scientific inquisition must begin. The lowliest minds will rest content with this without any fault in their conclusion or their logic; while the more critical, may still their lingering doubts, by completing the line of inquiry which the Neglected Argument opens; while on its concomitants they may base another Argument supporting the former, and so be led on to further reflections, remarks, and experiences which
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attain all the force of sound induction, the highest grade of certainty to which the human mind can attain on any Real subject.
It occurs to me, at this point, that my name necessarily being unknown to readers, they may be disposed to inquire among their acquaintances what just claims I may have to being considered an authority on logic. But I may save them that trouble, if it will not be deemed impertinent, by saying at once that I make no such claims at all.
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Logic, right reason, is a matter upon which every reader, as a reflective man, ought to have, and has in fact, an opinion of his own, which I neither expect nor should desire to reverse by anything I can say in a few pages. All that I shall aim at is to show that there is a sufficiently Plausible view of the course and rationale of scientific inquiry according to which the Neglected Argument
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and this must have been repeated on the following days, since subsequent tests proved that I had then fairly mastered that excellent and charming treatise. From that day to this logic has been my passion. After taking my degree in chemistry, I submitted myself to training in a varied range of sciences sufficient to enable me to produce at least one independent and original investigation in each; and, though none was of an ambitious nature, all were received with respect by master in the several departments, and one, at any rate, after several leading men had first made and then withdrawn objections to it, sensibly modified the usual method pursued in that
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merits the respect that I solicit for it.
Not in the least, then, to warp any reader's judgment, but merely to excite sufficient curiosity to increase the chance of my paper being read, I will introduce myself in a fashion to which one becomes accustomed in my country, by a bit of autobiographical réclame. It must have been in the year 1851, when I should have been twelve years old, that I remember picking up Whateley's Logic, in the study of my elder brother and asking him what logic was. I see myself thereupon stretched on his carpet devouring the book;