SHORT PAPERS
A short paper was contributed to this Section by Professor Alexander T.
Ormond, of Princeton University, on "Some Roots and Factors of Religion." The speaker said that religion, like everything else human, has its rise in man"s experience. It has also doubtless had a history that will present the outlines of a development, if but the course of that development can be traced. "But in the case of religion our theory of development will be largely qualified by our judgment as to its origin; while, regarding origin itself, we have to depend on hypotheses constructed from our more or less imperfect acquaintance with the races, and especially the savage races, of the present. The primitive pre-religious man is a construction from present data, and will always remain more or less hypothetical. This will partially explain, and at the same time partially excuse, what we will agree is the unsatisfactory character of the anthropological theories as accounts of the origin of religion. But there are other reasons for this partial failure that are less excusable. One of these is the rather singular failure of the leading anthropologists, in dealing with the origin of religion, to distinguish between _fundamental_ and merely tributary causes. For instance, if we suppose that man has in some way come into possession of a germ of religiousness, many things will become genuine tributaries to its development that when urged as explanations of the germ itself would be obviously futile. There must be a cause for the pretty general failure to note this distinction which is vital to religious theory, and I am convinced that the princ.i.p.al cause is a certain lack of psychological insight and of philosophical grasp in dealing with the problem of the first data and primary roots of religion in man"s nature.
"In the first place, it is needful in dealing with the religion of the hypothetical man that we should have some idea of what const.i.tutes religion in the actual man. Now, back of all the outward manifestations of religion, will stand the religious consciousness of the man and the community, and it will be this that will determine the idea of religion in its most essential form. The developed idea of religion, therefore, arising out of this germinal impression, would take the form of a sense (we may now call it concept) of relatedness to some being _akin_ to man himself, and yet transcending him in some real though undetermined respects. Anything short of this would, I think, leave religion in some respects unaccounted for; while anything more would perhaps exclude some genuine manifestations of religion.
"If the idea of religion arises out of an _impression_, then it will not be possible to deny to it an intellectual root. I make this statement with some diffidence, because if I do not misinterpret them, some recent psychologists have practically denied the intellectual root in their doctrine that religion can have no original intellectual content. If I am not further misled, however, these writers would admit that a content is achieved by the symbolic use of experience. This is perhaps all I need argue for here; since our epistemology is teaching us that the distinction between symbolism and perception is only that between the direct and the indirect; while here it is clear that its use in developing the significance of the religious impression would have all the directness and, therefore, all the cogency of an immediate inference.
"Let us now restore the intellectual and emotional elements of religion to their place in a synthesis; we will then have a concrete religious experience out of which may be a.n.a.lyzed at least two fundamental factors. The first of these is what we may call the _personal_ factor in religion. We are treading in the footsteps of the anthropologists when we find among the most undeveloped savages a tendency to personify the objects of their worship. When it comes to the question of determining the role that this personalizing tendency has actually played in the development of religion, the anthropologists divide into two camps, one of these, led by Max Muller, regarding it as a symbolic interpretation put upon the impression of some great natural or cosmic object or phenomenon; while others, including Herbert Spencer and Mr. Tylor, prefer to seek the originals of religion in ancestral dream-images and ghostly apparitions. These writers thus start with completely anthropomorphic terms, and their problem is to de-anthropomorphize the elements to the extent necessary to const.i.tute them data of religion.
The second factor standing over against the personal, as its opposite, is that of transcendence. By transcendence I mean that deifying, infinitating process that is ever working contra to the anthropomorphic influence in the sphere of religious conceptions. The School of Spencer regard this as the only legitimate tendency in religion. We do not argue this point here, but agree that it is as legitimate and real a factor as that of personality. The root of this factor, if our diagnosis of the idea of religion be correct, is to be sought in the original impression of religion, and it no doubt has its origin in man"s feeling-reaction from that impression. We have pointed to submission as one of the religious emotions. Now submission rests on some deeper feeling-att.i.tude, which some have translated into the feeling or sense of dependence. This, however, is not adequate, since men have the sense of social dependence on finite beings, and we have it with reference to the floor we are standing on. Rather, it seems to me, we must translate it into the stronger and more unconditional feeling of helplessness. One real ground of our religious consciousness is the sense or feeling of helplessness toward G.o.d; the sense that we have no standing in being as against the Deity. This radical feeling utters itself in every note of the religious scale, from the lowest superst.i.tious terror to the highest mystical self-annihilation.
"These two factors, the forces of personalization and transcendence, are inseparable. They const.i.tute the terms of a dialectic within the religious consciousness, by virtue of which in one phase our religious conceptions are becoming ever more adequate and satisfying, while from another point of view their insufficiency grows more and more apparent.
And, on the broader field of religious history, they embody themselves in a law of tendency, which Spencer has only half-expressed, by virtue of which the objects of religion are on one hand becoming ever more intelligible; on the other, ever more transcendent of our conceptions."
A short paper was read by Professor F. C. French, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Nebraska, on "The Bearing of Certain Aspects of the Newer Psychology on the Philosophy of Religion." The speaker said in part:
"The relation of science to religion has received, to be sure, much study, but to most minds. .h.i.therto this has meant the relation of only the physical sciences to religion. The older psychology was largely speculative and metaphysical in character. There were, of course, some who employed the empirical method in psychology, but they were so far from comprehending the full scope of mental phenomena that, at best, their work gave the promise of a science rather than a science itself.
"It is not the fact that the newer psychology takes account of the physiological conditions of mental life; it is not the fact that the subject is now pursued in laboratories with instruments of precision, that gives it its full standing as a science: it is much more the fact that the psychology of to-day has found a place in the natural system of mental things for those strange and relatively unusual phenomena of consciousness which to the scientifically minded seemed totally unreal and to the superst.i.tious manifestations of the supernatural....
"In showing that the abnormal can be explained in terms of the normal, psychology does now for the phenomena of mind what the physical sciences have long done for the phenomena of nature....
"Psychology as a science postulates the reign of natural law in the subjective sphere just as rigorously as physics postulates the reign of law in the objective sphere....
"It is not in the unusual and the abnormal that the reflective mind is to see G.o.d. It is not through gaps in nature that we are to get glimpses of the supernatural. Rather is it in the very nature of nature, rational, harmonious, law-conforming, subject to scientific interpretation, that we have the best evidence that the world is made mind-wise, that it is the work of an intelligent mind, that there is a rational spirit at the care of the universe.
"For science the transcendent does not enter into the perceptual realm external or internal. It is, indeed, hard for the religious mind to admit this fact in all its fullness. Until it does, however, religion must always stand more or less in fear of science. Once give up the perceptual, in all its bearings, to science, and religion will find that it has lost a weak support only to gain a stronger one. Ultimately, I believe, we shall find that the full acceptance of science in the mental domain as well as in the physical will strengthen the rational grounds of theistic belief."
SECTION C--LOGIC
SECTION C--LOGIC
(_Hall 6, September 22, 10 a. m._)
CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR GEORGE M. DUNCAN, Yale University.
SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR WILLIAM A. HAMMOND, Cornell University.
PROFESSOR FREDRICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE, Columbia University.
SECRETARY: DR. W. H. SHELDON, Columbia University.
The Chairman of this Section, Professor George M. Duncan, Professor of Logic and Mathematics at Yale University, in introducing the speakers spoke briefly of the scope and importance of the subject a.s.signed to the Section; expressed, on behalf of those in attendance, regret at the inability of Professor Wilhelm Windelband to be present and take part in the work of the Section, as had been expected; congratulated the Section on the papers to be presented and the speakers who were to present them; and announced the final programme of the Section.
THE RELATIONS OF LOGIC TO OTHER DISCIPLINES
BY PROFESSOR WILLIAM A. HAMMOND
[William Alexander Hammond, a.s.sistant Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy and aesthetics, Cornell University.
b. May 20, 1861, New Athens, Ohio. A.B. Harvard, 1885; Ph.D.
Leipzig, 1891. Lecturer on Cla.s.sics, King"s College, Windsor, N. S., 1885-88; Secretary of the University Faculty, Cornell; Member American Psychological a.s.sociation, American Philosophical a.s.sociation. Author of _The Characters of Theophrastus_, translated with Introduction; _Aristotle"s Psychology_, translated with Introduction.]
In 1787, in the preface to the second edition of the _Kr. d. r. V._, Kant wrote the following words: "That logic, from the earliest times, has followed that secure method" (namely, the secure method of a science witnessed by the unanimity of its workers and the stability of its results) "may be seen from the fact that since Aristotle it has not had to retrace a single step, unless we choose to consider as improvements the removal of some unnecessary subtleties, or the clearer definition of its matter, both of which refer to the elegance rather than to the solidity of the science. It is remarkable, also, that to the present day, it has not been able to make one step in advance, so that to all appearances it may be considered as completed and perfect. If some modern philosophers thought to enlarge it, by introducing _psychological_ chapters on the different faculties of knowledge (faculty of imagination, wit, etc.), or _metaphysical_ chapters on the origin of knowledge or different degrees of certainty according to the difference of objects (idealism, skepticism, etc.), or, lastly, _anthropological_ chapters on prejudices, their causes and remedies, this could only arise from their ignorance of the peculiar nature of logical science. We do not enlarge, but we only disfigure the sciences, if we allow their respective limits to be confounded; and the limits of logic are definitely fixed by the fact that it is a science which has nothing to do but fully to exhibit and strictly to prove the formal rules of all thought (whether it be _a priori_ or empirical, whatever be its origin or its object, and whatever be the impediments, accidental or natural, which it has to encounter in the human mind)."--[Translated by Max Muller.] Scarcely more than half a century after the publication of this statement of Kant"s, John Stuart Mill (Introduction to _System of Logic_) wrote: "There is as great diversity among authors in the modes which they have adopted of defining logic, as in their treatment of the details of it. This is what might naturally be expected on any subject on which writers have availed themselves of the same language as a means of delivering different ideas.... This diversity is not so much an evil to be complained of, as an inevitable, and in some degree a proper result of the imperfect state of those sciences" (that is, of logic, jurisprudence, and ethics). "It is not to be expected that there should be agreement about the definition of anything, until there is agreement about the thing itself." This remarkable disparity of opinion is due partly to the changes in the treatment of logic from Kant to Mill, and partly to the fact that both statements are extreme. That the science of logic was "completed and perfect" in the time of Kant could only with any degree of accuracy be said of the treatment of syllogistic proof or the deductive logic of Aristotle. That the diversity was so great as pictured by Mill is not historically exact, but could be said only of the new epistemological and psychological treatment of logic and not of the traditional formal logic. The confusion in logic is no doubt largely due to disagreement in the delimitation of its proper territory and to the consequent variety of opinions as to its relations to other disciplines. The rise of inductive logic, coincident with the rise and growth of physical science and empiricism, forced the consideration of the question as to the relation of formal thought to reality, and the consequent entanglement of logic in a triple alliance of logic, psychology, and metaphysics. How logic can maintain friendly relations with both of these and yet avoid endangering its territorial integrity has not been made clear by logicians or psychologists or metaphysicians, and that, too, in spite of persistent attempts justly to settle the issue as to their respective spheres of influence. Until modern logic definitely settles the question of its aims and legitimate problems, it is difficult to see how any agreement can be reached as to its relation to the other disciplines. The situation as it confronts one in the discussion of the relations of logic to allied subjects may be a.n.a.lyzed as follows:
1. The relation of logic as science to logic as art.
2. The relation of logic to psychology.
3. The relation of logic to metaphysics.
The development of nineteenth century logic has made an answer to the last two of the foregoing problems exceedingly difficult. Indeed, one may say that the evolution of modern epistemology has had a centrifugal influence on logic, and instead of growth towards unity of conception we have a chaos of diverse and discordant theories. The apple of discord has been the theory of knowledge. A score of years ago when Adamson wrote his admirable article in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ (article "Logic," 1882), he found the conditions much the same as I now find them. "Looking to the chaotic state of logical text-books at the present time, one would be inclined to say that there does not exist anywhere a recognized currently received body of speculations to which the t.i.tle logic can be unambiguously a.s.signed, and that we must therefore resign the hope of attaining by any empirical consideration of the received doctrine a precise determination of the nature and limits of logical theory." I do not, however, take quite so despondent a view of the logical chaos as the late Professor Adamson; rather, I believe with Professor Stratton (_Psy. Rev._ vol. III) that something is to be gained for unity and consistency by more exact delimitation of the subject-matter of the philosophical disciplines and their interrelations, which precision, if secured, would a.s.sist in bringing into clear relief the real problems of the several departments of inquiry, and facilitate the proper cla.s.sification of the disciplines themselves.
The attempt to delimit the spheres of the disciplines, to state their interrelations and cla.s.sify them, was made early in the history of philosophy, at the very beginning of the development of logic as a science by Aristotle. In Plato"s philosophy, logic is not separated from epistemology and metaphysics. The key to his metaphysics is given essentially in his theory of the reality of the concept, which offers an interesting a.n.a.logy to the position of logic in modern idealism. Before Plato there was no formulation of logical theory, and in his dialogues it is only contained in solution. The nearest approach to any formulation is to be found in an applied logic set forth in the precepts and rules of the rhetoricians and sophists. Properly speaking, Aristotle made the first attempt to define the subject of logic and to determine its relations to the other sciences. In a certain sense logic for Aristotle is not a science at all. For science is concerned with some _ens_, some branch of reality, while logic is concerned with the methodology of knowing, with the formal processes of thought whereby an _ens_ or a reality is ascertained and appropriated to knowledge. In the sense of a method whereby all scientific knowledge is secured, logic is a propaedeutic to the sciences. In the idealism of the Eleatics and Plato, thought and being are ultimately identical, and the laws of thought are the laws of being. In Aristotle"s conception, while the processes of thought furnish a knowledge of reality or being, their formal operation const.i.tutes the technique of investigation, and their systematic explanation and description const.i.tute logic. Logic and metaphysics are distinguished as the science of being and the doctrine of the thought processes whereby being is known. Logic is the doctrine of the organon of science, and when applied is the organon of science.
The logic of Aristotle is not a purely formal logic. He is not interested in the merely schematic character of the thought processes, but in their function as mediators of apodictic truth. He begins with the a.s.sumption that in the conjunction and disjunction of correctly formed judgments the conjunction or disjunction of reality is mirrored.
Aristotle does not here examine into the powers of the mind as a whole; that is done, though fragmentarily, in the _De Anima_ and _Parva Naturalia_, where the mental powers are regarded as phases of the processes of nature without reference to normation; but in his logic he inquires only into those forms and laws of thinking which mediate proof.
Scientific proof, in his conception, is furnished in the form of the syllogism, whose component elements are terms and propositions. In the little tract _On Interpretation_ (_i. e._ on the judgment as _interpreter_ of thought), if it is genuine, the proposition is considered in its logical bearing. The treatise on the _Categories_, which discusses the nature of the most general terms, forms a connecting link between logic and metaphysics. The categories are the most general concepts or universal modes under which we have knowledge of the world.
They are not simply logical relations; they are existential forms, being not only the modes under which thought regards being, but the modes under which being exists. Aristotle"s theory of the methodology of science is intimately connected with his view of knowledge. Scientific knowledge in his opinion refers to the essence of things; for example, to those universal aspects of reality which are given in particulars, but which remain self-identical amidst the variation and pa.s.sing of particulars. The universal, however, is known only through and after particulars. There is no such thing as innate knowledge or Platonic reminiscence. Knowledge, if not entirely empirical, has its basis in empirical reality. Causes are known only through effects. The universals have no existence apart from things, although they exist _realiter_ in things. Empirical knowledge of particulars must, therefore, precede in time the conceptual or scientific knowledge of universals. In the evolution of scientific knowledge in the individual mind, the body of particulars or of sense-experience is to its conceptual transformation as potentiality is to actuality, matter to form, the completed end of the former being realized in the latter. Only in the sense of this power to transform and conceptualize, does the mind have knowledge within itself. The genetic content is experiential; the developed concept, judgment, or inference is _in form_ noetic. Knowledge is, therefore, not a mere "precipitate of experience," nor is Aristotle a complete empiricist. The conceptual form of knowledge is not immediately given in things experienced, but is a product of noetic discrimination and combination. Of a sensible object as such there is no concept; the object of a concept is the generic essence of a thing; and the concept itself is the thought of this generic essence. The individual is generalized; every concept does or can embrace several individuals. It is an "aggregate of distinguishing marks," and is expressed in a definition. The concept as such is neither true nor false. Truth first arises in the form of a judgment or proposition, wherein a subject is coupled with a predicate, and something is said about something. A judgment is true when the thought (whose inward process is the judgment and the expression in vocal symbols is the proposition) regards as conjoined or divided that which is conjoined or divided in actuality; in other words, when the thought is congruous with the real. While Aristotle does not ignore induction as a scientific method, (how could he when he regards the self-subsistent individual as the only real?) yet he says that, as a method, it labors under the defect of being only proximate; a complete induction from _all_ particulars is not possible, and therefore cannot furnish demonstration. Only the deductive process proceeding syllogistically from the universal (or essential truth) to the particular is scientifically cogent or apodictic. Consequently Aristotle developed the science of logic mainly as a syllogistic technique or instrument of demonstration. From this brief sketch of Aristotle"s logical views it will be seen that the epistemological and metaphysical relations of logic which involve its greatest difficulty and cause the greatest diversity in its modern exponents, were present in undeveloped form to the mind of the first logician. It would require a mighty optimism to suppose that this difficulty and diversity, which has increased rather than diminished in the progress of historical philosophy, should suddenly be made to vanish by some magic of restatement of subject-matter, or theoretical delimitation of the discipline. As Fichte said of philosophy, "The sort of a philosophy that a man has, depends on the kind of man he is;" so one might almost say of logic, "The sort of logic that a man has, depends on the kind of philosopher he is." If the blight of discord is ever removed from epistemology, we may expect agreement as to the relations of logic to metaphysics. Meanwhile logic has the great body of scientific results deposited in the physical sciences on which to build and test, with some a.s.surance, its doctrine of methodology; and as philosophy moves forward persistently to the final solution of its problems, logic may justly expect to be a beneficiary in its established theories.
After Aristotle"s death logic lapsed into a formalism more and more removed from any vital connection with reality and oblivious to the profound epistemological and methodological questions that Aristotle had at least raised. In the Middle Ages it became a highly developed exercise in inference applied to the traditional dogmas of theology and science as premises, with mainly apologetic or polemical functions. Its chief importance is found in its application to the problem of realism and nominalism, the question as to the nature of universals. At the height of scholasticism realism gained its victory by syllogistically showing the congruity of its premises with certain fundamental dogmas of the Church, especially with the dogma of the unity and reality of the G.o.dhead. The heretical conclusion involved in nominalism is equivalent (the accepted dogma of the Church being axiomatic) to _reductio ad absurdum_. A use of logic such as this, tending to conserve rather than to increase the body of knowledge, was bound to meet with attack on the awakening of post-renaissance interest in the physical world, and the acquirement of a body of truth to which the scholastic formal logic had no relation. The anti-scholastic movement in logic was inaugurated by Francis Bacon, who sought in his _Novum Organum_ to give science a real content through the application of induction to experience and the discovery of universal truths from particular instances. The syllogism is rejected as a scientific instrument, because it does not lead _to_ principles, but proceeds only _from_ principles, and is therefore not useful for discovery. It permits at most only refinements on knowledge already possessed, but cannot be regarded as creative or productive. The Baconian theory of induction regarded the acc.u.mulation of facts and the derivation of general principles and laws from them as the true and fruitful method of science. In England this empirical view of logic has been altogether dominant, and the most ill.u.s.trious English exponents of logical theory, Herschel, Whewell, and Mill, have stood on that ground.
Since the introduction of German idealism in the last half century a new logic has grown up whose chief business is with the theory of knowledge.
Kant"s departure in logic is based on an epistemological examination of the nature of judgment, and on the answer to his own question, "How are synthetic judgments _a priori_ possible?" The _a priori_ elements in knowledge make knowledge of the real nature of things impossible. Human knowledge extends to the phenomenal world, which is seen under the _a priori_ forms of the understanding. Logic for Kant is the science of the formal and necessary laws of thought, apart from any reference to objects. Pure or universal logic aims to understand the forms of thought without regard to metaphysical or psychological relations, and this position of Kant is the historical beginning of the subjective formal logic.
In the metaphysical logic of Hegel, which rests on a panlogistic basis, being and thought, form and content, are identical. Logical necessity is the measure and criterion of objective reality. The body of reality is developed through the dialectic self-movement of the idea. In such an idealistic monism, formal and real logic are by the metaphysical postulate coincident.
Schleiermacher in his dialectic regards logic from the standpoint of epistemological realism, in which the real deliverances of the senses are conceptually transformed by the spontaneous activity of reason. This spirit of realism is similar to that of Aristotle, in which the one-sided _a priori_ view of knowledge is controverted. s.p.a.ce and time are forms of the existence of things, and not merely _a priori_ forms of knowing. Logic he divides into dialectic and technical logic. The former regards the idea of knowledge as such; the formal or technical regards knowledge in the process of becoming or the idea of knowledge in motion.
The forms of this process are induction and deduction. The Hegelian theory of the generation of knowledge out of the processes of pure thought is emphatically rejected.
Lotze, who is undoubtedly one of the most influential and fruitful writers on logic in the last century, attempts to bring logic into closer relations with contemporary science, and is an antagonist of one-sided formal logics. For him logic falls into the three parts of (1) pure logic or the logic of thought; (2) applied logic or the logic of investigation; (3) the logic of knowledge or methodology; and this cla.s.sification of the matter and problems of logic has had an important influence on subsequent treatises on the discipline. His logic is formal, as he describes it himself, in the sense of setting forth the modes of the operation of thought and its logical structure; it is real in the sense that these forms are dependent on the nature of things and not something independently given in the mind. While he aims to maintain the distinct separation of logic and metaphysics, he says (in the discussion of the relations between formal and real logical meaning) the question of meaning naturally raises a metaphysical problem: "Ich thue besser der Metaphysik die weitere Erorterung dieses wichtigen Punktes zu uberla.s.sen." (_Log._ 2d ed. p. 571.) How could it be otherwise when his whole view of the relations and validity of knowledge is inseparable from his realism or teleological idealism, as he himself characterizes his own standpoint?
Drobisch, a follower of Herbart, is one of the most thoroughgoing formalists in modern logical theory. He attempts to maintain strictly the distinction between thought and knowledge. Logic is the science of thought. He holds that there may be formal truth, for example, logically valid truth, which is materially false. Logic, in other words, is purely formal; material truth is matter for metaphysics or science. Drobisch holds, therefore, that the falsity of the judgment expressed in the premise from which a formally correct syllogism may be deduced, is not subject-matter for logic. The sphere of logic is limited to the region of inference and forms of procedure, his view of the nature and function of logic being determined largely by the bias of his mathematical standpoint. The congruity of thought with itself, judgments, conclusions, a.n.a.lyses, etc., is the sole logical truth, as against Trendelenburg, who took the Aristotelian position that logical truth is the "agreement of thought with the object of thought."
Sigwart looks at logic mainly from the standpoint of the technology of science, in which, however, he discovers the implications of a teleological metaphysic. Between the processes of consciousness and external changes he finds a causal relation and not parallelism.
Inasmuch as thought sometimes misses its aim, as is shown by the fact that error and dispute exist, there is need of a discipline whose purpose is to show us how to attain and establish truth and avoid error.
This is the practical aim of logic, as distinguished from the psychological treatment of thought, where the distinction between true and false has no more place than the distinction between good and bad.
Logic presupposes the impulse to discover truth, and it therefore sets forth the criteria of true thinking, and endeavors to describe those normative operations whose aim is validity of judgment. Consequently logic falls into the two parts of (1) critical, (2) technical, the former having meaning only in reference to the latter; the main value of logic is to be sought in its function as art. "Methodology, therefore, which is generally made to take a subordinate place, should be regarded as the special, final, and chief aim of our science." (_Logic_, vol. i, p. 21, Eng. Tr.) As an art, logic undertakes to determine under what conditions and prescriptions judgments are valid, but does not undertake to pa.s.s upon the validity of the content of given judgments. Its prescriptions have regard only to formal correctness and not to the material truth of results. Logic is, therefore, a formal discipline. Its business is with the due procedure of thought, and it attempts to show no more than how we may advance in the reasoning process in such way that each step is valid and necessary. If logic were to tell us _what_ to think or give us the content of thought, it would be commensurate with the whole of science. Sigwart, however, does not mean by formal thought independence of content, for it is not possible to disregard the particular manner in which the materials and content of thought are delivered through sensation and formed into ideas. Further, logic having for its chief business the methodology of science, the development of knowledge from empirical data, it ought to include a theory of knowledge, but it should not so far depart from its subjective limits as to include within its province the discussion of metaphysical implications or a theory of being. For this reason, Sigwart relegates to a postscript his discussion of teleology, but he gives an elaborate treatment of epistemology extending through vol. I and develops his account of methodology in vol. II. The question regarding the relation between necessity, the element in which logical thought moves, and freedom, the postulate of the will, carries one beyond the confines of logic and is, in his opinion, the profoundest problem of metaphysics, whose function is to deal with the ultimate relation between "subject and object, the world and the individual, and this is not only basal for logic and all science, but is the crown and end of them all."
Wundt"s psychological and methodological treatment of logic stands midway between the purely formal treatises on the one hand, and the metaphysical treatises on the other hand. The general standpoint of Wundt is similar to that of Sigwart, in that he discovers the function of logic in the exposition of the formation and methods of scientific knowledge; for example, in epistemology and methodology. Logic must conform to the conditions under which scientific inquiry is actually carried on; the forms of thought, therefore, cannot be separate from or indifferent to the content of knowledge; for it is a fundamental principle of science that its particular methods are determined by the nature of its particular subject-matter. Scientific logic must reject the theory that identifies thought and being (Hegel) and the theory of parallelism between thought and reality (Schleiermacher, Trendelenburg, and Ueberweg), in which the ultimate ident.i.ty of the two is only concealed. Both of these theories base logic on a metaphysics, which makes it necessary to construe the real in terms of thought, and logic, so divorced from empirical reality, is powerless to explain the methods of scientific procedure. One cannot, however, avoid the acceptance of thought as a competent organ for the interpretation of reality, unless one abandons all question of validity and accepts agnosticism or skepticism. This interpretative power of thought or congruity with reality is translated by metaphysical logic into ident.i.ty. Metaphysical logic concerns itself fundamentally with the content of knowledge, not with its evidential or formal logical aspects, but with being and the laws of being. It is the business of metaphysics to construct its notions and theories of reality out of the deliverances of the special sciences and inferences derived therefrom. The aim of metaphysics is the development of a world-view free from internal contradictions, a view that shall unite all particular and plural knowledges into a whole.