GENERAL OUTLINE OF METHOD 15 



Moreover, the pupil should be trained, as far as possible, to discover, 

 himself, the reasons and causes of the things observed by him. This involves 

 the use of the analytic method, and develops the spirit of analysis in the 

 learner. Such initiation into the method of independent personal investigation 

 constitutes the immense difference there is between intellectual education 

 proper and mere instruction. 



This method of teaching by suggestion, of drawing out the learner s 

 powers by judicious questioning, is called the Socratic method, after the 

 Grecian sage who made such a fruitful use of it. He, himself, appropriately 

 called it the /iaievruoj Tt^vij, the art of intellectual obstetrics or mental mid 

 wifery .* 



This stage of analysis and observation is a necessary step towards ab 

 straction of ideas and intuition of first principles. These notions and 

 principles become in turn the explanatory reasons of the facts in which they 

 are realized. The learner will next be taught, by an application of the 

 synthetic method, to make use of those principles and laws for the under 

 standing and explanation of concrete phenomena. 



Thus he will be taught to make use both of observation and of abstraction, 

 both of analysis and of synthesis. The former without the latter would lead 

 to narrowness of view, to the shortsighted philosophy of Positivism ; the latter 

 without the former, to barren, empty speculations, and to the substitution of 

 mere verbal explanation for real science. The sciences of observation develop 

 the spirit of specialized research ; the mathematical and metaphysical sciences, 

 the deductive, speculative turn of mind. 



It will be seen, therefore, that as a rule the method employed in exposition 

 is the same as that employed in discovery ; that the art of teaching must 

 follow nature ; that the mind of the learner must follow substantially the 

 same path, whether he discover truth on his own account or be guided into 

 the knowledge of it by one who is already in possession of it. 



Of course, when the exposition &quot; is intended for well-prepared adults 

 as when one writes a text-book, the most appropriate method is, generally 

 speaking, that of synthesis, as by that method the necessary relations of the 

 parts of the subject to each other are most clearly shown.&quot; 2 But even here 

 it is well to remember that the abstract, universal principle or law is not always 

 the easiest to grasp at the starting-point. In an example from chemistry, 

 given by Father Clarke in his Logic? we are told that &quot;in each of these 

 opposite processes [analysis and synthesis], the rule ... of commencing with 

 what is more familiar, and thence proceeding to what is more remote and 



] Socrates used to seek from others the knowledge they imagined they possessed, 

 and which he himself pretended not to possess. His arguments took the form of 

 dialogues, each in two parts. In the first, his &quot; irony &quot; confounded his interlocutor 

 and convinced the latter of the weaknesses and drawbacks of his position. In the 

 second, Socrates gradually drew from him a new and truer definition, a better under 

 standing, of the matter in dispute. After silencing his opponent in the first or de 

 structive stage of his discourse, he would begin by another series of questions to 

 construct a new solution- of the problem to substitute for the exploded error, or 

 &quot;spurious offspring,&quot; the &quot; veritable fruit &quot; of a &quot; new-born &quot; truth. The conclu 

 sion of the dialogue thus became the &quot; fruit of their personal reflection,&quot; the &quot; child 

 of their thought &quot;. C. PIAT, Socrate, pp. 106-109, Paris, Alcan, 1900. 



8 WELTON, Logic, ii., p. 214. a pp. 471-74. 



