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LOGIC is the mind's systematic attempt to understand the nature and the conditions of the search after Truth. To the question, 'What is Truth ?' we would answer by suggesting the following provisional definition :

Truth is the Unity of ideas as systematically organized through the control exercised by relevant fact.

Or

Truth is the Unity of Thought as systematically organized through the control exercised by that aspect of Reality which is relevant to the purpose of the thinker.

With a view to bringing out the meaning of these definitions, we must state in the first place that we do not regard Truth as a datum, but as a problem. The truth we seek cannot be that from which we start, for were truth already attained at the outset, no sufficient reason could be assigned for proceeding any further with the quest. We might, of course, regard the Truth as given, and devote our energies to its systematic exposition and application. But, in that case, we should have radically to alter our definition of Logic. Logic would no longer deal with the Search after Truth, but would be busied solely with the question of its consistent presentation. Logic would just mean Consistency-Logic, and might be defined as the mind's systematic attempt to understand the nature and the conditions of a correct presentation of the Truth. But, valuable as such a Consistency-Logic would be, its logical value would lie, not in its relation to a system of given truth, but in its analysis and development of the laws of consistent thinking.

We would draw attention, in the second place, to the fact that Truth is defined as a Unity, and that to define Truth as a Unity is to ground logical inquiry on a monistic basis. We cannot, of course, justify monistic faith by merely asserting it, nor, by asserting it, make our meaning clear. 'Monism' is a catchword as dear to the Rationalism of Hegel as it is to that of Haeckel, and we suspect that much that calls itself Pluralism is but Monism in the making. It is indeed a much-abused word, and we introduce it thus bluntly, at the outset of our inquiry, not as a dogma but as a problem. To justify our monistic faith we need here do no more than justify our right to accept the struggle for complete unity of thought as the fundamental mark of the truth-seeker, and the attempt to define the nature and conditions of such a struggle as the distinctive function of Logic.

We might justify this right by presenting it as a necessity of our logical reason, and contend that it is meaningless to suppose that Unity of Thought and Purpose can be ultimately satisfied by anything short of the Unity of the Universe. Or we might defend our monistic faith as a postulate limiting the scope of our inquiry, and proceed confidently with our venture, more than content with the perfect freedom conferred upon us by our own self-limitation. We would prefer, however, to point quite simply to a certain insatiability of logical appetite as the best justification for our Monism. For if we forgo or evade the struggle after Unity, we really do limit ourselves in quite a literal and painful sense. We renounce the hope of a logical conquest that shall leave us nothing foreign or unsubdued to mock us with its alien nature. We abdicate a fraction of our empire, and must live in perpetual dread of border troubles, of disturbances emanating from those shadowy entitiesthe dim hosts of the ununifiable. And can one imagine thought surveying such a chaos from the edge of its own self-limited domain and still deliberately disclaiming a redemptive mission? Is it not thought's nature rather to weep because, like Alexander, it sees no further worlds to conquer ? Our sufficient apology, then, for regarding the Truth-problem as a search after Unity is that logical ambition can be satisfied with nothing less, and cannot endure the sight of chaos battening for lack of its two-edged sword.

We turn, in the third place, to our contention that relevant fact is the agency which controls the process through which our thinking becomes systematized. The precise function of the expression 'relevant fact' is to indicate that truth implies at once a reference to purpose and a reference to reality; and the second of the two definitions of Truth that we have given explicitly brings out this implication.

Thought submits itself to fact as the experimenter submits himself to the object experimented on. As the experimenter determines the conditions under which the experiment shall take place, so thought selects and determines the aspect under which the facts shall be thought. The purpose of the inquiry, be it that of the physicist, the biologist, the artist, or the mystic, determines the range of fact within which the student of Nature recognizes an objective control. It is true that to conquer Nature we must obey her; but we must know clearly what it is that we obey, and to this end must first select and mark out the domain that we have then to conquer through submission. The investigator of Nature is thus at once self-controlled by his own purpose, and outwardly controlled by the facts in so far as they are germane to that purpose. In a word, he is controlled throughout by 'relevant fact'i.e., by the objective nature of that aspect of the universe which is relevant to his subjective interest.

We thus reach the conclusion that the conception of Truth from which we set out itself determines the principle which must dominate and inform our whole attempt to realize it. If the Unity of our thought is to be shaped through the pressure of relevant fact, then fidelity to relevant fact must be the fundamental principle through which growth in Truth is determined, and it must also figure as the standard or criterion of any inquiry into the conditions of its attainment. So we take it as our guiding clue through the mazes of the logical problem.* We shall realize its determinative influence, not only in the problems of definition and division, where it operates in the interests of Order and non-ambiguity, but even in fixing what we mean by meaning-the 'meaning' which these processes serve to develop. Again, the reference which the principle implies to purpose, and through purpose to reality, will be found to enter into the very conception of a complete logical judgment; whilst, in methodology and the problem of scientific explanation, this principle of fidelity to relevant fact will be explicitly sustained as the fundamental principle and standard of Induction, and rendered determinate in the light of the Inductive Postulate.

Let us now apply these general considerations to the special case of the present inquiry. The truth we have in view is Truth in so far as it can relevantly serve as an Ideal for a pre-philosophical Logic. When preparing for more difficult flights-e.g., for a truth-journey down the abysmal depths of personality-Logic might reasonably desire to equip itself with a more penetrating conception of Truth than is required for its more preliminary labours. If Truth is, in all cases, the Ideal which we aim at progressively realizing through Knowledge, and is conceived as that which can adequately satisfy the thinker's will to know, then the Truth-Ideal will vary with the view we take of Knowledge, and also with the depth of this will to know. By Knowledge we may understand Self-Knowledge, and the depth of the truth-interest will then be measured by the depth of the

* The relation of this Principle to the Laws of Thought may be stated in the simplest way by saying that the former presupposes the latter. But it is only in the purely Formal treatment of the logical problem, in connexion with the problem of Inference, that the Laws of Thought, as we understand them, can be accepted as an adequate logical standard. Where the truth-interest is present, a concreter principle -operating, of course, in conformity with the Laws of Thought-is required to give positive direction to our thinking.

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