The derivation of Reason as given in the preceding sections may be
summed up thus:--the meeting of Minds gives Perception or primary
experience; Attention selects therefrom objects of special interest
to the observer; Memory retains impressions of these in the mental
plasma, by which ideas of them are recollected though the originating
mind be not present; community with divergence of imprint gives rise
to Comparison; from this are derived Imagination and Generalisation;
from imagination emerge Reason and Art.
Generalisation is thus only a collateral relation of reason, not
its immediate parent nor in the direct line of descent. It is not
essential to reason, but may enter as a subsidiary process into an
argument. If the things we argue about are numerous it will be more
correct to generalise them and then argue from the general idea,
than to argue from one concrete object to another. But innumerable
inferences are drawn from one particular thing to another, and these
involve no generalisation.
Reason is chiefly the art of predicting by means of the intellect what
will occur to us in the future. Its use is to enable us to prepare
for future events in so far as our resources permit. We never predict
quite accurately, but general preconceptions are better than none
at all. The same process by which we preconceive the future can be
applied to the conception of what is actually taking place but not
within our ken--as at the antipodes--and can be applied also to events
that took place in the past and will never be experienced by us. It
might be objected that as regards the past we can have no motive in
imagining it, seeing we can never experience it. But a conception of
the past is often a necessary condition of our conceiving the future,
and is artistically interesting. It awakens pleasing emotions to be
able to picture to ourselves, even imperfectly, states of the world
and of society that have long been obsolete.
An investigation of the manner in which reason supplies us with ideas
of the unknown, involves the consideration and arrangement of so
many details that it may be regarded as a small science in
itself--DIALECTIC.
A dialectician (logician in the narrower sense) is neither a
grammarian nor an encyclopedia of the best information on every
subject. His office consists in deciding whether certain theorems
are arguments or not. An ARGUMENT is an act or product of rational
imagination. Theorems which purport to be arguments, but are not, are
FALLACIES.
A fallacy is not merely a _bad_ argument--it is no argument at all.
Quite apart from fallacy there is a goodness and badness in arguments,
but with this discrimination the dialectician (as such) has nothing
to do. Only persons experienced in the matter are competent to decide
between good and bad arguments. Hence when the quality of an argument
is in question the dialectician takes no part in the debate: he is
neither combatant nor umpire. He is at most an impartial president
whose chief duty is to see that people do not debate about mere words
and foregone conclusions. Granting that a theorem has the qualities
of an argument, the dialectician is not competent to say that it is
improper or too trivial to be discussed. He is not a judge of what
people ought to be interested in.
From his better knowledge of what constitutes rational prediction, a
dialectician may offer his services to disentangle and render explicit
involved and partial arguments. Many people reason well who are yet
unable to express themselves coherently. A dialectician should be able
to reconstruct an argument from the slightest hint, as a naturalist
imagines an animal from a single bone. In ordinary reasoning the
arguments are seldom fully expressed, and the reasoners themselves are
not always quite conscious of the premises from which they argue. All
such suppressed and overlooked assumptions should be brought to light
by dialectic, the aim of which is to render reason as self-conscious
as possible.
Though a dialectician need not be an expert in any department of
knowledge, he must know the facts on which an argument is built,
otherwise he may be deceived by equivocal language. Reverting to the
instance of the vase--the dialectician must have seen both the whole
vase and the broken vase, but he need not have any opinion as to
whether the proposed handle is the most suitable, or not. That must
be left to those who are familiar with vases and who are interested in
the restoration of the one in question.
The definition here given of the scope and office of dialectic may
appear to some too modest. But in reality there is a great deal
involved in it. Philosophers have been discussing Reason for twenty
centuries or more, and have not produced a satisfactory definition
of it. Consequently they cannot decide with any confidence whether a
theorem is an argument or a fallacy. The cleverest of them give
their sanction to theorems that are demonstrably fallacies. They are
evidently judging more by ear than by rule. All this causes confusion
of mind and waste of energy.
Dialectic takes its general idea of reason from the higher analysis
of logic, and brings the general idea to bear on concrete arguments.
A dialectician makes a collection of theorems for study just as
a botanist makes a collection of plants. He sorts them out into
convenient classes, separates the valid or useful from the erroneous
and misleading, studies the relation of language to argument and the
influence for good or ill that words have upon rational thought.
From the example of the vase cited above it will be seen that in
every act of reason two principal things are requisite. There must
be something wholly known (or comparatively well known) and something
less well known, and the reasoning or argument consists in ideally
completing the latter on the model of the former. If we would predict
the coming of a future season of the year we must have a picture in
the mind of all the seasons in the order in which they occur. If we
would go straight to a place on the surface of the earth we must have
a plan of the way in our imagination. If we would predict the effect
of a drug on an animal body we must have previously noticed the effect
it has produced--and so on. Neither the mind nor intellect supplies
spontaneously any of these models; they are all formed out of actual
experience remembered and recollected. When they have been refined
into extremely general ideas they are apt to be taken for innate
tendencies of the intellect, as Kant erroneously thought. They are not
so; all we know of the intellect is consistent with the belief that
it begins with pure plasm without a trace of idea, and is absolutely
indifferent to the imprints it may receive. Doctrines of innate
ideas--innate forms of thought or categories--innate 'principles' of
various kinds--are devices of metaphysicians to cover the weakness of
their theories.
The two main parts of an argument divide naturally into four
subdivisions. There is the thing argued about (corresponding to the
broken vase); there is the ideal extension or restoration; in the
model we reason from there are the parts corresponding to each of
these. I propose to take terms for these four parts from one of the
most important, formal and correct modes of reasoning--the application
of a precedent or statute to a case in Law.