274 Objective Treatment of Logic. [CHAP. xi. 



unless we resort to other methods of enquiry. We do not, as 

 in Induction, feel ourselves on the brink of some experi 

 mental or other proof which at any moment may raise it 

 into certainty. It is nothing but a conjecture of a certain 

 degree of strength, and such it will ever remain, so long as 

 Probability is left to deal with it. If anything more is ever 

 to be made out of it we must appeal to direct experience, or 

 to some kind of inductive proof. As we have so often said, 

 individual facts can never be determined here, but merely 

 ultimate tendencies and averages of many events. I may, 

 indeed, by a second appeal to Probability improve the 

 character of my conjecture, through being able to refer it to 

 a narrower and better class of statistics ; but its essential 

 nature remains throughout what it was. 



It appears to me therefore that the account of the Material 

 ist view of logic indicated at the commencement of this 

 chapter, though substantially sound, needs some slight recon 

 sideration and restatement. It answers admirably so far as 

 ordinary Induction is concerned, but needs some revision 

 if it is to be equally applicable to that wider view of 

 the nature and processes of acquiring knowledge wherein 

 the science of logic is considered to involve Probability 

 also as well as Induction. 



9. Briefly then it is this. We regard the scientific 

 thinker, whether he be the original investigator who dis 

 covers, or the logician who analyses and describes the proofs 

 that may be offered, as surrounded by a world of objective 

 phenomena extending indefinitely both ways in time, and in 

 every direction in space. Most of them are, and always will 

 remain, unknown. If we speak of them as facts we mean 

 that they are potential objects of human knowledge, that 

 under appropriate circumstances men could come to deter 

 minate and final agreement about them. The scientific or 



