THE NATURE OF REALITY 439 



example, there is no danger of misleading. The common 

 feature of all of the following positions is that they attempt 

 to draw conclusions as to a theory of reality upon the basis 

 not of the facts of science but of its methods. According to 

 all of them not what the scientist knows but the way in which 

 he knows is important for a more inclusive outlook. For 

 example, in three of the following cases there is specific 

 reference to the character of scientific symbols and the way 

 in which they presumably designate their referents; in the 

 fourth the data are to be found in the method of idealization, 

 which is, again, a fact about the knowing rather than that 

 which is known. The basing of speculative problems on the 

 techniques of knowing rather than on the actual conclusions 

 seems to give them a firmer foundation. For any fact of 

 science is more or less specific. But methods, in the very 

 nature of the case, are more general and permeate all of the 

 sciences to a certain extent. Furthermore, they are more 

 permanent, hence make the speculative superstructure less 

 precarious. It is probably true that each of the positions to 

 be considered makes an erroneous analysis of the specific 

 feature of method to which it refers, but this is of no impor- 

 tance when one's purpose is mere illustration. The actual 

 ways in which they make use of these methodological aspects 

 can be made clear only if there is a preliminary consideration 

 of the general problem. 



GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE PRORLEM 



The first feature to be emphasized is the fact that the 

 inference to a realm beyond that which is obviously given is, 

 in a certain sense, unavoidable. Though science — and even 

 philosophy — professes to be satisfied with a pure phenom- 

 enalism, it has not often remained long in this unstable posi- 

 tion. As Bacon long ago pointed out, the mind is prone to 

 soar into flights of the imagination, and can be restrained 

 only with difficulty; there is so little difference between the 

 disciplined imagination which is reasoning, and the undisci- 

 plined imagination which is speculation that the mind passes 



