ABSTRACT
How far a psychological explanation of intelligence is possible depends on the way in which logical operations are interpreted: are they the reflection of an already formed reality or the expression of a genuine activity? No doubt only the notion of an axiomatic logic can enable us to escape from this dilemma, by submitting the actual operations of thought to a genetic interpretation, while admitting the irreducible character of their formal connections when these are analysed axiomatically; the logician then proceeds as does the geometer with the space that he constructs deductively, while the psychologist can be likened to the physicist, who measures space in the real world. In other words, the psychologist studies the way in which the actual equilibrium of actions and operations is constituted, while the logician analyses the same equilibrium in its ideal form, i.e. as it would be if it were completely realised, and as it is imposed on the mind as a norm.
