156 SCIENCE AND METHOD. 



capable of rendering some service, but it appears to 

 me that M. Couturat attaches to it an exaggerated 

 importance that must have astonished Peano himself. 



The essential element of this language consists in 

 certain algebraical signs which represent the con- 

 junctions : if, and, or, therefore. That these signs may 

 be convenient is very possible, but that they should be 

 destined to change the face of the whole philosophy is 

 quite another matter. It is difficult to admit that 

 the word if acquires, when written d, a virtue it did 

 not possess when written if. 



This invention of Peano was first called pasigraphy, 

 that is to say, the art of writing a treatise on mathe- 

 matics without using a single word of the ordinary 

 language. This name defined its scope most exactly. 

 Since then it has been elevated to a more exalted 

 dignity, by having conferred upon it the title of 

 logistic. The same word is used, it appears, in the Ecole 

 de Guerre to designate the art of the quartermaster, 

 the art of moving and quartering troops.* But no 

 confusion need be feared, and we see at once that the 

 new name implies the design of revolutionizing logic. 



We may see the new method at work in a mathe- 

 matical treatise by Signor Burali-Forti entitled " Una 

 Questione sui Njijjieri transjrniti" (An Enquiry concern- 

 ing transfinite Numbers), included in Volume XI. of the 

 " Rcndiconti del circolo matematico di Palermo " (Reports 

 of the mathematical club of Palermo).* 



I will begin by saying that this treatise is very 

 interesting, and, if I take it here as an example, it 



* In tlie French the confusion is wilh ^'' logistique,^' the art of the 

 " niar(^-chal des logis,''' or quartermaster. In English the possibility of 

 confusion does not arise. 



