existed," "other similar pressures exist," "a conceivable centaur does
not exist but is a figment," are all equally true, because they are in
accordance with one or other of these kinds of knowledge. Consequently,
as knowledge is attainable by sense, memory and inference, truth is also
attainable, because, though we cannot test what we know by something
else, we can test what we judge and assert by what we know. Not that all
inference is knowledge, but it is sometimes. The aim of logic in general
is to find the laws of all inference, which, so far as it obeys those
laws, is always consistent, but is true or false according to its data
as well as its consistency; and the aim of the special logic of
knowledge is to find the laws of direct and indirect inferences from
sense, because as sense produces sensory judgments which are always true
of the sensible things actually perceived, inference from sense produces
inferential judgments which, so far as they are consequent on sensory
judgments, are always true of things similar to sensible things, by the
very consistency of inference, or, as we say, by parity of reasoning.
We return then to the old view of Aristotle, that truth is believing in
being; that sense is true of its immediate objects, and reasoning from
sense true of its mediate objects; and that logic is the science of
reasoning with a view to truth, or _Logica est ars ratiocinandi, ut
discernatur verum a falso_. All we aspire to add is that, in order to
attain to real truth, we must proceed gradually from sense, memory and
experience through analogical particular inference, to inductive and
deductive universal inference or reasoning. Logic is the science of all
inference, beginning from sense and ending in reason.
In conclusion, the logic of the last quarter of the 19th century may be
said to be animated by a spirit of inquiry, marred by a love of paradox
and a corresponding hatred of tradition. But we have found, on the
whole, that logical tradition rises superior to logical innovation.
There are two old logics which still remain indispensable, Aristotle's
_Organon_ and Bacon's _Novum Organum_. If, and only if, the study of
deductive logic begins with Aristotle, and the study of inductive logic
with Aristotle and Bacon, it will be profitable to add the works of the
following recent German and English authors:--
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