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variable circumstances of an infinity of "cases." Consequently it never necessitates, or justifies, absolute prediction, which would be possible only if the "variables" in the new cases were absolutely identical with those of the old; whereas the course of history can go on engendering novelties, without ever repeating itself. But the novelties have become intelligible.

Some sciences indeed go further. Biology, for example, under Darwinian inspiration, has actually devised an expedient for systematically apprehending Novelty. It attributes the origination of varieties, the source of supply for the differences to be sifted out for survival by natural selection, to "accidental variation." Accidental variation is thus made an essential factor in its scheme of explanation, in fact a "category," as good as most. And yet what is it but creative chance? It is a mere re-statement of the fact of Novelty, and its whole value lies in its recognition of this fact.

It does not follow, therefore, that scientific method refuses to recognize the new as such, and really reduces it to the old, and makes an end of it. The methodological procedure which seemed to do this was a fiction, and only a preliminary to the proper placing of the new, and to an evaluation of its contribution to our growing world, and our growing knowledge. The abstraction from Novelty, then, can, and must, be undone, and does not incapacitate our thought from recognizing Novelty. In short, for science, the negation of Novelty is only provisional and methodological: it does not justify our human hatred of Novelty and the denials and disguises of Novelty to which this hatred goads us.

V.

Our concern so far has been with Novelty überhaupt, with its existence as a fact, and its conceivability as such. My endeavour has been to show both that Novelty exists, that it is conceivable, and scientifically manageable, and that our prejudice against it, though natural enough, both can, and should, be overcome. Let me next try to draw out some of the

consequences which the recognition of Novelty carries for some of the philosophic sciences.

I will begin with Logic rather than with Metaphysics, because, though metaphysics are just now multiplying far too freely and we have far too many of them, without logic they are like plants without roots, and can at best lead a saprophytic existence.

Logic, however, in spite of its fundamental position, is at present very much of a science in distress. Most philosophers have either despaired of it, or else made it into an impenetrable mystery. I cannot approve of either attitude: both seem to me to be wrong, and indeed, for my purposes, practically coincident. Both, moreover, seem to spring from one and the same blunder, an obstinate and inveterate refusal to recognize Novelty, really and fully, in Logic, as elsewhere. Once we consent to do this, there is no reason either for mystery or for despair. Novelty is as vital to Logic as to every science that is concerned with life, occurs in it as plainly and inevitably as anywhere else, and is explicable in it in a perfectly simple and natural way.

We can easily understand how novelty gets into logic, if we will deign to observe that Logic is a failure if it cannot deal with actual human thought, that every train of thought is purposive, and that logical processes can only occur in trains of thought. Hence they only occur when a thinker believes that by reasoning he can achieve some cognitive aim, and get to something he does not yet possess; that is, can attain new truth ("new," perhaps to all or " to science," but at any rate to him) or impart truth familiar to him to others, to whom it will be "new," and will convey instruction. Unless one of these conditions is fulfilled, there will not normally be any thinking or reasoning; consequently there will not be produced any material for logic to evaluate. "Novelty or nullity" is the first law of Thought, if Thought is not to be divorced from thinking, and Reason from reasoning.

This truth should not be hidden from us by the fact that

a good deal of futile and superfluous thinking may go on. An inquirer may laboriously "discover" what is not new but old. An instructor may teach what is no news to his hearers. All men make mistakes. But if the result of a thoughtprocess is not new, the process was superfluous; while a reasoner who habitually tells us nothing we did not know before is merely a bore.

It is plain, therefore, that if logical process is to be in any real sense rational, it must conduce and conduct to novelty, and that a theory of logical proof which leaves no room for novelty cannot be right. It is fatuity, or at best verbal trifling. Yet it is an astonishing fact that 2000 years of logical reflexion have left logic impotent to account for novelty in thought, even though a sort of recognition of it was from the first involved in Aristotle's demand that the conclusion must prove something "other" than what was stated in the premisses. This postulate, in Aristotle's eyes, would perhaps have been satisfied by any verbal variant; still it does not get Logic out of the absurd position of being unable to "prove" the truth of anything new, or to admit the novelty of anything true. This absurdity has now lasted for well over 2000 years, and Logic shows little desire to extricate itself from a muddle that seems to be essential to its claim to "formal validity."

The reason for this embarrassment is merely that logicians have divorced reason from reasoning. They have chosen to imagine an "ideal" of Reason so high and holy that it excludes human reasoning altogether, and renders it unintelligible and impossible. They have become so enamoured of it that not even the discovery that they had inadvertently reduced their own ideal "forms of proof," the "syllogism" and the "system," to unmeaning nonsense has been able to deter them. Yet a child can see that there must be something wrong with a form of reasoning which only "proves" what has already been ascertained otherwise, or else assumes the very point it pretends to prove. This flaw in the syllogism has often been "discovered,"

and never been met; yet it remains "new" enough to be repeated

once more.

(1) If in a syllogism the major premiss is "taken in extension,” it is manifestly false if, in asserting that all men are mortal, no provision has been made for immortals like Tithonus, Elijah, the Struldbrugs and the Wandering Jew: while if these cases have been proved mythical, what novelty, or point, can there be in re-asserting the mortality of one of the cases already examined before the major premiss could be formulated?

(2) If we do not wish either to deny that certain “men” have miraculously evaded death or to sacrifice our major premiss to these exceptions, it is easy to take it as a definition, and so to exclude Elijah, Tithonus and Co. from the class of "men." But, if so, has it not become a tautology that all men are mortal, and what novelty can the conclusion convey?

the

(3) If, lastly, we try to take the major premiss in intension, as a statement of a "law of nature," we speedily come upon same dilemma as before. We have merely to raise the question whether the "case" to which we are arguing in the conclusion is really a case in point. For it is by no means certain in advance that the "law" we are trying to apply is the right one to use upon the "case," that the case is a case in point" and not a deceptive imitation; or that, though a good enough case in a general way, it is therefore a case for the special purpose of our argument. If we assume all this, we shall be assuming the very point to be proved; while if we are in a position to know that ours is a case in point, our conclusion will once more have failed to attain to novelty.*

And yet if reasoning brings out nothing new, why reason at all? If our premisses are already known to be as true as true can be before we use them, and if our conclusion is implicit in them, the syllogism seems a silly farce. It is a superfluity, unless it gets to something not otherwise accessible. And nothing but

*Cf. Formal Logic, ch. xvi.

an old logical prejudice prevents us from so taking it. It is perfectly possible to conceive this syllogism, as it occurs in real thought, and as alone it can occur therein, as a thoughtexperiment with reality which forecasts the course of events we are entitled to expect on the strength of past experience. But we do not know whether our expectation will be fulfilled. The rightness or wrongness of our anticipation is the news we learn from the event. If our conclusion comes true in actual fact, the reaction on our syllogism is to confirm our belief in its correctness and in the truth of its premisses; if not, we infer that there is some flaw in the premisses. Clearly on this interpretation the premisses must be taken as hypotheses whose truth is not assured; similarly the conclusion, though it ought to come true, and logically must if the premisses hold, need not happen in fact. When therefore it does come about, we learn something new, viz., that our premisses were so far true, and that logical reasoning has availed to predict the actual course of events. Of course this interpretation implies, what nonsyllogistic reasoning openly avows, that reasoning does not start from certainty but from doubt, and reaches not absoluteness but, at best, adequacy to the actual problem considered. It means also that the attempt to abstract from the psychological side of reasoning is wrong in principle, and must be abandoned. And why resent this? For why should it be denied that every thought requires a thinker, and every thinker needs a motive? The need for Novelty then establishes itself even in the interpretation of the Syllogism.*

VI.

Logic, then, not only pronounces a nihil obstat upon the need for Novelty, but in passing it on to Metaphysics associates itself with the demand. Metaphysics however has plenty of

* The ideal of "system" must accommodate itself similarly. For if the system is conceived as "closed" and impervious to novelty, it becomes a fallacious "argument in a circle." Cf. my paper in last year's Proceedings.

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