mean the failure of liver and the absence of digestion. And in the same
manner we speak of the dangers of logic, when what we really mean is the
danger of fallacy.

But the real point about the limitation of logic and the partial
overthrow of logic by writers like Carlyle is deeper and somewhat
different. The fault of the great mass of logicians is not that they
bring out a false result, or, in other words, are not logicians at all.
Their fault is that by an inevitable psychological habit they tend to
forget that there are two parts of a logical process--the first the
choosing of an assumption, and the second the arguing upon it; and
humanity, if it devotes itself too persistently to the study of sound
reasoning, has a certain tendency to lose the faculty of sound
assumption. It is astonishing how constantly one may hear from rational
and even rationalistic persons such a phrase as 'He did not prove the
very thing with which he started,' or 'The whole of his case rested upon
a pure assumption,' two peculiarities which may be found by the curious
in the works of Euclid. It is astonishing, again, how constantly one
hears rationalists arguing upon some deep topic, apparently without
troubling about the deep assumptions involved, having lost their sense,
as it were, of the real colour and character of a man's assumption. For
instance, two men will argue about whether patriotism is a good thing
and never discover until the end, if at all, that the cosmopolitan is
basing his whole case upon the idea that man should, if he can, become
as God, with equal sympathies and no prejudices, while the nationalist
denies any such duty at the very start, and regards man as an animal
who has preferences, as a bird has feathers.

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