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narrow field. But in every case, it was the method of inquiry which was my real interest. In 1886, in order to escape distractions from my study of logic, I retired to the wildest county that I could easily reach in the northern states, where I have not ceased to pursue the study of logic. Very likely, my results may be very far wrong, although I naturally do not think so. For it is a perillous thing to sever oneself for a long time from the conversation of intellectual men. But it is what every man must do who intends in dead earnest to revise a subject which lies in so unsettled a state as logic still does. It must be some years yet before I can submit to students any comprehensive view of my conclusions.
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always sought the truth which I had not already found, if it appeared to come within the scope of my purposes; and certainly I carry intellectual self-criticism almost to the limits of sanity.
I will now try to describe the Neglected Argument, not as it might grow up in the rude, deformed mind of a peasant or operative, but rather as it would appear to a fairly disciplined intelligence, equally skilled to disregard all the influences of his environment, or to detect and clutch the most furtive
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always sought the truth which I [had] not already found; and certainly I carry self-criticism almost to the point at which it would become a craze.
I will now describe the Neglected Argument, not in the form it might take in the rudest mind, but as an ordinary man of intelligence might form it. He would begin by contemplating the three universes of minds, matter, and Ideas (when I thus "capitalize" this word, as we say in this country, I shall mean it in the sense of what may be made the substance of
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open to impressions from without of every kind. Does the reader know the delights and benefit to be gained by choosing revery for his favorite recreation? Let him devote half an hour to it almost daily, not always in the same part of the nychthemeron, but rather trying all the watches; the dawn and the gloaming are the most favorable,—it is as refreshing an exercize in moderation as it is destructive in intemperance. By revery, I mean drinking in, in their original, unseparated state, the influences
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an arbitrary hypothesis, in the sense in which the initial hypotheses of pure mathematics are said to be arbitrary; that is, there is no reason to think that they are existentially realized, perhaps the reverse.) Let him contemplate them in all ways, regardless of all maxims that seek to set up bars across the path of inquiry. For experience can teach him, as I trust it has me, effectually, that nothing can be more pernicious. In my youth, I used to read from the great "authorities" of those days such saws as that, "one science should not borrow the methods of another"; "the only really scientific part of astronomy must