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undertaking. Fortunately, however, a single illustration will sufficiently indicate the sort of difference Pragmatism would introduce into the traditional maltreatment.

Let us consider a couple of actual, and probably familiar, modes of reasoning. (1) The world is so bad that there must be a better; (2) the world is so bad that there cannot be a better. It will probably be admitted that both of these are common forms of argumentation, and that neither is devoid of logical force, even though in neither case does it reach 'demonstration.' And yet the two reasonings flatly contradict each other. Now my suggestion is that this contradiction is not verbal, but deep-rooted in the conflicting versions of the nature of thought which they severally exemplify. The second argument alone it would seem could claim to be strictly 'logical.' For it alone conforms to the canons of the logical tradition which conceives reasoning as the product of a pure thought untainted by volition. And as in our theoretical reflections we can all disregard the psychological conditions of actual thinking to the extent of selecting examples in which we are interested merely as examples, we can appreciate its abstract cogency. In arguing from a known to an unknown part of the universe, it is 'logical' to be guided by the indications given by the former. If the known is a 'fair sample' of the whole, how can the conclusion be otherwise than sound? At all events how can the given nature of the known form a logical ground for inferring in the unknown a complete reversal of its characteristics?

And yet this is precisely what the first argument called for. Must not this be called the illogical caprice of an irrational desire? By no means. It is the intervention of an emotional postulate which takes the first step in the acquisition of new knowledge. But for its beneficent activity we should have acquiesced in our