An introductory text-book of logic - Mellone, Sydney - Rare Books at ...

330 THE PROBLEMS WHICH WE HAVE RAISED.
and only through them has our knowledge such co
herence as it now possesses. We have discussed some
of the more fundamental of these principles e.g., the
Aristotelian Canon of Deductive Reasoning (ch. V. 6),
and the Law of Universal Causation (ch. VIII. 6).
The chief object of Modern Logic is to state these
principles as completely and systematically as possible,
in the light of the idea that the general activity of
Thought may be compared to the activity of a living
organic body.
"
In this
"
case as the writer has ex
pressed it elsewhere
"
the intellectual postulates appear
as the vital processes or functions e.g., digestion, cir
culation, respiration by which the life of the organism
is preserved and its growth effected ; they are the vital
functions of thought. It is useless to discuss the cer
tainty of any one of these principles when considered
in isolation ; the very fact that we are separating it
and considering it by itself precludes us from seeing
its real significance. Its true character only appears
through the function it performs in the growth of
intelligence and the attainment of knowledge ; and
to discuss this function is to treat it not in isolation
but in relation to other similar principles to inquire
into its place in our intellectual activity as a whole." J
Hence we see in what sense Logic is "formal" (ch. I. 2).
It discusses the general characteristics of the thinking pro
cess without regard to the particular details which form the
objects of the thinking.
But for a similar reason,
"
all science
is formal, because all science consists in tracing out the uni
versal characteristics of things, the structure that makes
them what they are." To say that a science is formal is
only to say that a definite kind of properties comes under the
point of view from which that science looks at things ; and
1
Philosophical Criticism and Construction, ch. i.
p. 12.