t FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 19 



^f the most salutary reforms in thought which could be 

 effected would be for people to accustom themselves to 

 the ideal of fields, and to look upon every concrete thing 

 or person or even abstract idea as merely a centre, sur- 

 rounded by zones or aurae or spheres of the same nature 

 as the centre, only more attenuated and shading off into 

 indefiniteness. 



There is one more remark I wish to make in regard to the 

 activity of the abstract intelligence in construing our actual 

 experience. I have already shown how in a special 

 case this abstract activity has converted the psychical 

 factor of Natural Selection into the semblance of a 

 mechanical force. The risk of error is, however, much 

 greater than that particular instance may serve to 

 indicate. One may say that the analytical character of 

 thought has a far-reaching effect in obscuring the nature 

 of reality, which has to be carefully guarded against. In f 

 order to understand and explore any concrete situation, f 

 we analyse it into its factors or elements, whose separate 

 operation and effects are then studied, in isolation so to say. j 

 This procedure is not only quite legitimate, but the only one 

 possible, if we wish to understand and investigate the com- 

 plex groupings of nature. It is the analytical method which 

 science has applied with such outstanding success; and but 

 for this analysis of a complex phenomenon or situation into 

 its separate elements and the study of these in isolation, it 

 is fair to assume that very little progress would have been 

 possible in the understanding of Nature with all her obscure 

 processes. When the isolated elements or factors of the 

 complex situation have been separately studied, they are 

 recombined in order to reconstitute the original situation. 

 Two sources of error here become possible. In the first 

 place, in the original analysis something may have escaped, 

 so that in the reconstruction we have no longer all the 

 original elements present, but something less. I have 

 already shown how " fields " escape in the idea of things 

 and even in concepts. The same happens in regard to the 

 elements into which a situation is analysed. And it is cer- 



I 



