CHAPTER II. 

 GENERAL VIEW OF THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF LOGIC. 



7. AIM AND OBJECT OF LOGIC ; NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL 

 LOGIC ; THE &quot; ARS ARTIUM &quot; ; THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC : ITS 

 MATERIAL AND FORMAL OBJECT. The object with which logic 

 deals will be determined by the question : What is the aim of 

 logic ? And about this question there is little or no difference of 

 opinion. The aim of logic is to aid the mind in arriving at a 

 knowledge of the truth. It lays down certain rules which the 

 mind must follow if it is to secure truth and avoid error. 



No doubt, every person of ordinary intelligence learns, by 

 the experience of life, to appreciate the proper means of securing 

 the ends he may have in view. Experience teaches us to regu 

 late our conduct, that is, to adapt our acts to the ends we pursue. 

 Now the adaptation of an act to an end implies a perception of 

 the relation between act and end. And these relations are formu 

 lated in certain practical rules or maxims according to which a 

 prudent man will always regulate his actions. These plain truths, 

 accepted if not acted on by all, are what people usually call by 

 the name of sound common sense. They are not the fruit of any 

 deliberate reflection or study, but they imply certain judgments 

 and conclusions empirically formed, one hardly knows how or 

 why, more than half unconsciously perhaps, and yet such that 

 we implicitly rely on them in our estimation of current affairs 

 and of human activity generally. We think and judge and 

 reason and infer according to these spontaneous dictates of our 

 rational nature : they form a sort of Natural Logic of which no 

 sane person is entirely destitute. 



But this common sense is of itself far from infallible ; it really 

 does not carry us very far or very safely in any beyond simple 

 and easy things ; even shrewd, clever people often find out after- 

 wards that their first spontaneous judgments misled them. In 

 difficult matters they must needs pause and reflect maturely on all 



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