i9o6J ROYCE— PRINCIPLES OF THEORETICAL SCIENCE. 91 



thinking. To this end he uses means for the analysis of the think- 

 ing process which have become accessible only within the last genera- 

 tion. They are the means furnished by a new and now rapidly pro- 

 gressive science called symbolic logic. Not all the actual students 

 of our topic have as yet made use of this instrument of research. 

 Comparatively few are well acquainted with it. But there can be, 

 to the initiated, no doubt of the fundamental importance of this in- 

 strument. By means of this and of other instruments of analysis, 

 the modern student is endeavoring to trace thought to its sources, 

 or in more exact language, to see in just what relations we place ob- 

 jects and ideas before us, whenever we undertake to think about 

 such objects and ideas. The thinking process is by no means as 

 monotonous an affair as the ordinary traditional textbooks of logic 

 have depicted. It is worth while to add that the analysis of concepts 

 in which tl^ie student of logic is interested is from this point of view 

 very different indeed from a psychological analysis of thinking or 

 from any analysis that could be carried out either by means of di- 

 rect introspection or by means of the study of language. Whoever 

 is disposed, as some psychologists are, to imagine that logic is a 

 special branch of psychology, may well be invited to make an ex- 

 cursion into modern logic long enough to consider that analysis of 

 the relations amongst the concepts : and, or, the concepts of implica- 

 tion, and the concept of negation, which the recent methods include. 

 Such psychologists are then invited to endeavor to discover by what 

 psychological analysis of the thinking process they could ever de- 

 tect these relations. 



When the analysis of the thinking process is accomplished, so 

 far as that is yet possible, the student of modern logic is next inter- 

 ested in surveying the range of variation to which our theoretical 

 concepts may be subjected. For it is a notable fact that however 

 wide the range of liberty that we give to our thoughts, however free 

 the range of creative activities over which we let ourselves roam, 

 the results in the way of conceptual structure which appear to be 

 accessible, are remarkably limited as to the number of generically 

 distinct types which appear to be open for our consideration. Each 

 one of these types appears, indeed, to involve, as we have already 

 indicated, an infinitude of various exemplifications. But with all this 



