Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/180

166 F. C. S. SCHILLER : to conceive this indispensable distinction and to guard us against so fatal a confusion. Instead of proving a help to the logician it here becomes a snare, by reason of the funda- mental abstraction of its standpoint. For if, following Mr. Alfred Sidgwick's brilliant lead, we describe as formal logic every treatment of our cognitive processes which abstracts from the concrete application of our logical functions to actual cases of knowing, it is easy to see that the meaning of an assertion can never be determined apart from the actual application. From the mere verbal form, that is, we cannot tell whether we are dealing with a valid judgment or a sheer claim. To settle this, we must go behind the state- ment : we must go into the rights of the case. Meaning depends upon purpose, and purpose is a question of fact, of the context and use of the form of words in actual knowing. But all this is just what the abstract standpoint of formal logic forbids us to examine. It conceives the meaning of a proposition to be somehow inherent in it as a form of words, apart from its use. And so when it finds that the same words may be used to convey a variety of meanings in various contexts, it solemnly declares the form of judgment to be as such ambiguous, even though in each actual case of use the meaning intended may be perfectly clear to the meanest understanding ! It seems to me extremely doubtful, therefore, whether a genuine admission of the validity of our distinction could be extracted from any formal logician. For it is greatly to be feared that even if he could be induced to admit it in words, he would yet insist on treating it too as purely formal, and rule out on principle attempts to de- termine how de facto the distinction was established and employed. Although, therefore, our distinction appears to be as clear as it is important, it does not seem at all certain that it would be admitted by the logicians who are so enamoured of truth in the abstract that they have ceased to recognise it in the concrete. More probably they would protest that logic was being conducted back to the old puzzle of a general criterion of truth and error, and would adduce the failures of their predecessors as a valid excuse for their present apathy. Or at most they might concede that a distinction between a truth and a claim to truth must indeed be made, but allege that it could not take any but a negative form. The sole criterion of truth, that is, which can be given, is that truth is not self-contradictory or incoherent. This statement, of course, is merely dogmatic assertion : it can hardly inspire confidence so long as it precedes and precludes examination