Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 3. 1936-37

Fragment ID: 18039

1936-37

Does logic help us to observe, think, judge, imagine in the right intellectual way?

No, not necessarily. It is a theoretical training; you learn by it some rules of logical thinking. But the application depends on your own intelligence. In any sphere of knowledge or action a man may be a good theorist but a poor executant. A very good military theorist and critic if put in command of an army might very well lose all his battles, not being able to suit the theories rightly to the occasion. So a theoretical logician may bungle the problems of thought by want of insight, of quickness of mind or of plasticity in the use of his capacities. Besides, logic is not the whole of thinking; observation, intuition, sympathy, many-sidedness are more important.