Excerpt from Formal Logic: A Scientific and Social Problem

The present work, however, is only intended to achieve the former, and intrinsically the less important, of these aims. It is an attempt to expound the traditional doctrine strictly, in its dependence on its fundamental assumption, viz. That it is possible to study the formal frat/z of thought irrespective of its truth in point of fact, and to show that this fundamental abstraction everywhere leads to failure, failure both to account for the procedures of human thinking and failure to attain even formal consistency. Thus the various defects of the Formal doctrine are all derived from the falsity of the initial principle which defines the 'science.' I confess that to myself the discovery of the source of Logic's troubles came as a great relief. For, in common with most teachers of Formal Logic, I had found it a very difficult subject to teach without loss of self-respect. It so constantly seemed to be necessary to slur over the real difficulties to which the traditional doctrines conduct honest thinking, to palliate masses of inconsistency in what professes to be a logic of formal consistency, to refuse arbitrarily to pursue the problems raised, on the plea that they extended beyond the field of Logic into 'metaphysics' or 'psychology, ' and to draw the line between the 'logical' and the 'extra-logical in a wholly illogical manner. All logicians, I believe, have felt these difficulties more or less, and seen that nothing is easier than to attack and condemn Formal Logic with its own weapons. Indeed in the details of its criticisms this book will probably be found to present little that is wholly new. What alone may claim to be something of a novelty is the diagnosis of the malady which has paralysed Logic from the beginning, and rendered it so unsatisfactory a subject of instruction, and so impotent to guide the course of human thinking. It is not possible to abstract from the actual use of the logical material and to consider 'forms of thought in themselves, without incurring thereby a total loss, not only of truth but also of meaning.

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