Preface 5 



justification lies in the fact that they are natural and inevitable 

 in the treatment of such a subject as the one under considera- 

 tion. All that is teleologically implied in any process is rarely 

 genetically realised in the more or less fortuitous course of 

 temporal development. There must always be aspects of a 

 subject which will be part seen but never wholly realised, for 

 that prospective power of vision which the spirit exercises is 

 one phase of the method of our experience itself. 



Hence, while this treatment of the Concept of Method seeks 

 to preserve a unity which comes alone from the organic nature 

 of its thought, it must suffer at the same time from an incom- 

 pleteness which is characteristic of all that is organic when re- 

 garded from the point of view of the immediate realisation of 

 all the implications that are latent in it. But since a certain 

 organic unity and the possibility of further development are char- 

 acteristic of every subject which is regarded from the functional 

 point of view, the non-appearance of these qualities would in- 

 dicate a lack in the method of treatment itself. 



Whether these notes — for they are little more — will even 

 prove suggestive to those whose thoughts tend in the same di- 

 rection has scarcely been anticipated. Their main purpose is 

 to emphasise the strong necessity in the educational theory of 

 the present day for an analysis of the process of experience itself 

 with a view to realising its organic character, to making ap- 

 parent its implications, and to maintaining its ultimate reality, 

 in idea, as the method of our existence. 



The obligations of this treatment of the subject of method 

 to the general body of philosophical writing can be only imper- 

 fectly indicated in the Bibliography appended it is indebted for 

 its original suggestion and for its final form to Dr. John Angus 

 MacVannel, under whose supervision this dissertation has been 

 written. 



G. R. L. 



