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This phase of Peirce’s work is highly technical and an account of it is out of place here. Such an account will be found in Lewis’ Survey of Symbolic Logic.^[17] I refer to it here only to remind the reader that the Illustrations of the Logic of the Sciences (ssss1 of this volume) have a background of patient detailed work which is still being developed to-day.

Symbolic logic has been held in rather low esteem by the followers of the old classical methods in philosophy. Their stated objection to it has been mainly that it is concerned with the minutiae of an artificial language and is of no value as a guide to the interpretation of reality. Now it should be readily admitted that preoccupation with symbolic logic is rather apt to retard the irresponsible flight of philosophic fancy. Yet this is by no means always an evil. By insisting on an accuracy that is painful to those impatient to obtain sweeping and comforting, though hasty, conclusions, symbolic logic is well calculated to remove the great scandal of traditional philosophy—the claim of absolutely certain results in fields where there is the greatest conflict of opinion. This scandalous situation arises in part from the fact that in popular exposition we do not have to make our premises or assumptions explicit; hence all sorts of dubious prejudices are implicitly appealed to as absolutely necessary principles. Also, by the use of popular terms which have a variety of meanings, one easily slides from one meaning to another, so that the most improbable conclusions are thus derived from seeming truisms. By making assumptions and rules explicit, and by using technical terms that do not drag wide penumbras of meaning with them, the method of symbolic logic may cruelly reduce the sweeping pretensions of philosophy. But there is no reason for supposing that pretentiousness rather than humility is the way to philosophic salvation. Man is bound to speculate about the universe beyond the range of his knowledge, but he is not bound to indulge the vanity of setting up such speculations as absolutely certain dogmas.