THIS BOOK is a development of ideas regarding the nature of
logical theory that were first presented, some forty years ago,
_ in Studies in Logical Theory; that were somewhat expanded
in Essays in Experimental Logic and were briefly summarized with
special reference to education in How We Think. While basic
ideas remain the same, there has naturally been considerable modification during the intervening years. While connection with the
problematic is unchanged, express identification of reflective
thought with objective inquiry makes possible, I think, a mode of
statement less open to misapprehension than were the previous
ones. The present work is marked in particular by application of
the earlier ideas to interpretation of the forms and formal relations
that constitute the standard material of logical tradition. This interpretation has at the same time involved a detailed development,
critical and constructive, of the general standpoint and its under-lying ideas.