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generally precede demonstrations
matical mind is unsuited to coping with it, unaided. It stand in need of logical analysis which neither Laplace, Boole, or any other mathematician has taken the first steps toward supplying, but which a mind naturally bent toward and thoroughly trained in exact logic could bring within the easy reach of every intelligent man at all capable of exactitude of thought. Mr. Venn did some excellent and useful work in this direction, while leaving the most essential parts either quite untouched or else darkened by his nominalistic obsessions.
The purpose of the Second Stage of inquiry is to draw consequences
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the life-time of one mind, and that, perhaps, a dull one, is but a drop in the ocean of all Logic, including, as it does, not only Methodeutic, but also Critic, and the analysis of forms of cognition.
I come now to the second part of my statement, how the reasoning characteristic of each Stage of inquiry is logically valid, that is, what our assurance is of its leading to the truth. For Deduction, Kant gave the correct answer: The conclusion merely explicates a part of the meaning of the copulate premiss. We always think in Signs, meaning by a sign anything existing (whether substantially, dynamically, or by imputation) in either of the three Universes of experience, and being influenced direction or indirectly by something else (called its Object) in either Universe, in its turn produces such a conclusion as otherwise than true. My answer is that Deduction
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that a thought fulfills this definition of a sign. All the signs used in Deduction are creations of the Mind both Utter (i.e. create and put into expression,) and Interpret (i.e. perceive the relations of signification,) of three kinds of Signs; namely, Icons, which I have already defined, such as the construction in a demonstration of Euclid, Indices, or signs which stand for the Real Objects and Facts for which they stand by virtue of being actually connected with them, such as the letters which distinguish the three angles of one of Euclid's triangles; and Symbols, or general conventional Signs, which stand for what they do because they will be so interpreted. For Deduction merely developes
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Finally, what sort of validity has the first Stage of inquiry? This is the most vitally important of the three questions, as well for the general theory of scientific inquiry as for the Neg. Arg. For whether it be true or not, as according to the pure Darwinian hypothesis it is, that it is fortuitous variations in reproduction alone that bridged the whole gulf between moner and man, certain it is that between the ultimate ideal goal of science
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and the grovelling notions that primitive man must have had of his environment has been step by step bridged over by man's conjectures; and that neither of the other Stages of inquiry have supplied a single new idea. It is so plain that, under these circumstance, the success of scientific inquiries alone and that of individual inquiries alone, establishes far beyond all reasonable doubt that the human mind has a decided tendency to guess right independently of any evidence, that I feel shame in arguing such a point. Yet I will give one out of several arguments of equal force to the same effect. It is evident, as DeMorgan first showed, that the members of any collection or arbitrary list whatever have some character at once common