This order has a certain aesthetic value, but it is emphatically _not_ the order of discovery, and throws no light on the process of acquiring knowledge. § 35. What function then can be assigned to the logician’s reflection on the workings of science? In view of his failure to substantiate his claim to have provided a model for inquiry in his scheme of ‘proof’, it might seem that he was either useless or pernicious. Useless, if he merely devotes himself to constructing ‘ideals of proof’ which he admits to have no relation to the actual problems of science; pernicious, if he is prompted by these ideals to make demands with which no science can comply, and to deliver judgements which would paralyse the science that attempted to carry them into execution. Fortunately, he cannot enforce them, and the sciences actually go on their way, ignoring such ‘logic’. The proper inference from his impotence is that he would do well to take up a position which is more useful and more influential, if less pretentious. Let the logician then give up the pretence of dictating to the sciences and of judging the worth of scientific truth by rigid forms of absolute proof; let him abandon the vain pursuit of ‘validity’. Nay, more, let him renounce the claim to determine the scientific value of an argument by a mere inspection of its logical character. Let him confess that what alone he can criticize is the incongruities in its verbal expression, and that its real value lies beyond his ken. If he will concede all this, his reward will be that he has vindicated for logic an important right of more real value than the claims he has abandoned. For he will have obtained the right of summoning the sciences to state their results in intelligible and consistent terms, and to confront them with a problem when they do not. Just because he does not presume to condemn them, and no longer ventures to declare that incompatible and verbally ‘contradictory’ results are necessarily wrong and worthless, but only urges that they are not intelligible as they stand, and need to be reworded or inquired into farther, he gains the right of _raising problems_, and stimulates the sciences to proceed to solve them. It should be noted, moreover, that the problems thus raised are general, not special, i.e. are properly logical. The problem about ‘contradictory’ results is one about meaning, for contradictory assertions cancel each other’s (apparent) meaning. This enables the logician to keep the sciences engaged upon the logical problem of solving the discrepancies between their results, so long as the sciences do not form one complete and congruous system, i.e. indefinitely. Similarly the denial that truth is absolute is a general truth that affects all the sciences. It should stimulate them all, for it means that no statement is so perfect that it cannot be bettered and that no limits can be set to the progress of science.