io W. G. Langivorthy Taylor 



should be written this epitaph: "Slain by an Idea." How many 

 of us are in bondage to ideas instead of using them as a means 

 of daily upbuilding! Thus the search for clearness may actually 

 lead us away from higher and down to lower realities. Are the 

 difficulties inherent in clear thinking to prevent us forever from 

 attaining to the highest realities? Whatever change takes place 

 in our method, it can not afford definitively to sacrifice clearness. 

 It makes little difference whether we say that we abandon the 

 logical method or that we change our logic — that is a mere 

 matter of words. The impact of the isolated stroke must not be 

 lost. It is possible that the caliber of our guns has reached its 

 limit. It is the rapid succession of distinct blows on which we 

 are henceforth to rely. The self-conscious center will remain the 

 target of the sensory fire. The question of the improvement of 

 our logic is a question of the target's power of resistance and of 

 the rapidity and exactness of the discriminating fire maintained 

 by the subordinate centers. We have seen that the advantage of 

 education consists in increasing our self-consciousness and that 

 the method to this end is a logical one. We have also seen that 

 logic suffers from the very considerable disadvantage of partiality 

 and one-sidedness ; it necessarily introduces us only to a por- 

 tion of our subject ; it separates out particular influences and 

 traces them through an otherwise unanalyzed and unexp'ained 

 mass of material. Not only does this process tend to destroy 

 mental perspective, but it may even cause us to know practically 

 less about the whole subject and its relation to life than we might 

 otherwise have known from common everyday experience. This 

 result is deeply to be deprecated. Of course, the static method, by 

 repeated applications, does, after a fashion, bring about a pretty 

 fair analysis of the subject-matter. Life is like a geometrical 

 solid ; it may be sliced by an infinite number of planes at an infinite 

 number of angles in order to analyze it fully. But this process 

 does not suit our. rushing age. The aim of the newer logic must 

 be "to bring theory and practice together," and this without 

 unreasonable delay. We wish not merely to perceive the relation 

 of all the parts of any given section to each other, but also to feel 

 the motion of those parts incident to their rearrangement. Life 



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