THE FIELD OF LOGIC 325 



and which, most certainly, are not brought about by it. And what 

 is this but the claim that judgment as such is never instrumental ? 

 In other words, a judgment which effected its own content would 

 only by the merest accident function as valid knowledge. We have 

 valid knowledge, then, only when the implications of the judgment 

 are found to be independent of the judging process. We have know- 

 ledge only at the risk of error. The pragmatic test of validity, instead 

 of proving the instrumental character of judgment, would thus 

 appear to prove just the reverse. 



Valid knowledge has, therefore, for its content a system of real, 

 not judged or hypothetical implications. The central problem of 

 logic which results from this fact is not how a knowledge of real 

 implications is then possible, but what are the ascertainable types 

 of real implications. But, it may be urged, we need some criterion to 

 determine what a real implication is. I venture to reply that we 

 need none, if by such is meant anything else than the facts with 

 which we are dealing. I need no other criterion than the circle to 

 determine whether its diameters are really equal. And, in general, 

 I need no other criterion than the facts dealt with to determine 

 whether they really imply what I judge them to imply. Logic appears 

 to me to be really as simple as this. Yet there can be profound pro- 

 blems involved in the working out of this simple procedure. There is 

 the problem already stated of the most general types of real impli- 

 cation, or, in other words, the time-honored doctrine of categories. 

 Whether there are categories or basal types of existence seems to me 

 to be ascertainable. When ascertained, it is also possible to discover 

 the types of inference or implication which they afford. This is by 

 no means the whole of logic, but it appears to me to be its central 

 problem. 



These considerations will, I hope, throw light on the statement 

 that while knowledge works, it is not therefore knowledge. It works 

 because its content existed before its discovery by the knowledge 

 process, and because its content was not effected or brought about 

 by that process. Judgment was the instrument of its discovery, not 

 the instrument which fashioned it. While, therefore, willing to admit 

 that logical processes are vital processes, I am not willing to admit 

 that the problem of logic is radically changed thereby in its formu- 

 lation or solution, for the vital processes in question have the unique 

 character of knowledge, the content of which is what it claims to be, 

 a system of real implications which existed prior to its discovery. 



In the psychological and biological tendencies in logic, there is, 

 however, I think, a distinct gain for logical theory. The insistence 

 that logical processes are both mental and vital has done much to 

 take them out of the transcendental aloofness from reality in which 

 they have often been placed, especially since Kant. So long as 



