ogic as a system of defence against error? Why say that
its main end and aim is the organisation of reason against confusion
and falsehood? Why not rather say, as is now usual, that its end is
the attainment of truth? Does this not come to the same thing?

Substantially, the meaning is the same, but the latter expression
is more misleading. To speak of Logic as a body of rules for the
investigation of truth has misled people into supposing that Logic
claims to be an art of Discovery, that it claims to lay down rules
by simply observing which investigators may infallibly arrive at new
truths. Now, this does not hold even of the Logic of Induction, still
less of the older Logic, the precise relation of which to truth will
become apparent as we proceed. It is only by keeping men from going
astray and by disabusing them when they think they have reached their
destination that Logic helps men on the road to truth. Truth often
lies hid in the centre of a maze, and logical rules only help the
searcher onwards by giving him warning when he is on the wrong track
and must try another. It is the searcher's own impulse that carries
him forward: Logic does not so much beckon him on to the right path
as beckon him back from the wrong. In laying down the conditions of
correct interpretation, of valid argument, of trustworthy evidence,
of satisfactory explanation, Logic shows the inquirer how to test and
purge his conclusions, not how to reach them.

To discuss, as is sometimes done, whether Fallacies lie within the
proper sphere of Logic, is to obscure the real connexion between
Fallacies and Logic. It is the existence of Fallacies that calls Logic
into existence; as a practical science Logic is needed as a protection
against Fallacies. Such historically is its origin. We may, if we
like, lay down an arbitrary rule that a treatise on Logic should be
content to expound the correct forms of interpretation and reasoning
and should not concern itself with the wrong. If we take this view we
are bound to pronounce Fallacies extra-logical. But to do so is
simply to cripple the usefulness of Logic as a practical science.
The manipulation of the bare logical forms, without reference to
fallacious departures from them, is no better than a nursery exercise.
Every correct form in Logic is laid down as a safeguard against some
erroneous form to which men are prone, whether in the interpretation
of argument or the interpretation of experience, and