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ogic as a system of defence against error? Why say that its main end and aim is the organisation of reason against confusion and falsehood? Why not rather say, as is now usual, that its end is the attainment of truth? Does this not come to the same thing? Substantially, the meaning is the same, but the latter expression is more misleading. To speak of Logic as a body of rules for the investigation of truth has misled people into supposing that Logic claims to be an art of Discovery, that it claims to lay down rules by simply observing which investigators may infallibly arrive at new truths. Now, this does not hold even of the Logic of Induction, still less of the older Logic, the precise relation of which to truth will become apparent as we proceed. It is only by keeping men from going astray and by disabusing them when they think they have reached their destination that Logic helps men on the road to truth. Truth often lies hid in the centre of a maze, and logical rules only help the searcher onwards by giving him warning when he is on the wrong track and must try another. It is the searcher's own impulse that carries him forward: Logic does not so much beckon him on to the right path as beckon him back from the wrong. In laying down the conditions of correct interpretation, of valid argument, of trustworthy evidence, of satisfactory explanation, Logic shows the inquirer how to test and purge his conclusions, not how to reach them. To discuss, as is sometimes done, whether Fallacies lie within the proper sphere of Logic, is to obscure the real connexion between Fallacies and Logic. It is the existence of Fallacies that calls Logic into existence; as a practical science Logic is needed as a protection against Fallacies. Such historically is its origin. We may, if we like, lay down an arbitrary rule that a treatise on Logic should be content to expound the correct forms of interpretation and reasoning and should not concern itself with the wrong. If we take this view we are bound to pronounce Fallacies extra-logical. But to do so is simply to cripple the usefulness of Logic as a practical science. The manipulation of the bare logical forms, without reference to fallacious departures from them, is no better than a nursery exercise. Every correct form in Logic is laid down as a safeguard against some erroneous form to which men are prone, whether in the interpretation of argument or the interpretation of experience, and
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