86 The Concept of Method 



consideration of such a partial aspect of the whole field of ex- 

 perience as that of control as a function of method, we are 

 obliged in the way of prolegomena, to pay some attention to 

 those fundamental ideas w'hich make it an organic part of our 

 thought and at the same time give it significance in our experi- 

 ence as a whole. 



The three great ideas that underlie a functional idealism have 

 already been stated to be (i) Unity, (2) Interaction, (3) De- 

 velopment. What concerns us now, therefore, is to show that 

 these fundamental ideas are necessary presuppositions to any 

 consideration of control as a function of method. 



(i) In the first place, in order to have any philosophy at all 

 there must be recognised, either explicitly or implicitly, some 

 kind of unity. The discovery of this unity has always been the 

 goal of philosophic inquiry, whether objectively in the field of 

 science, or subjectively in the realm of psychology and meta- 

 physics. Every advance that has been made in or through thought 

 has been due to a closer approximation to such a unity, for even 

 the recognition of differences is indirect evidence of a unity. In 

 that aspect of the general process of method to which we have 

 given the name control, this same quality of unity is a prere- 

 quisite to its existence, either as a concept in the mind, or as a 

 process objectively realising itself in experience. Control neces- 

 sarily implies conformity to a standard, and therefore uniformity 

 and ultimate unity. It involves, not ultimate disparates and per- 

 manently separable entities — for between these there could be no 

 function of control — but an ideal of uniformity which involves, 

 fundamentally and essentially, permanence as its principle. With- 

 out permanence there can be no control, and without control there 

 can be no method, for in the largest sense method is the control 

 of experience by principles. 



(2) In the second place, however, the very fact that we have 

 to search for this element of permanence and unity, and that it 

 continually influences our thought, indicates that there is some 

 sort of interaction between the standard that we set up as the 

 goal or ideal of our thinking and the activity of thought itself. 

 This interaction depends upon the general correspondence be- 

 tween the mind of man and the universe of possible experience 

 which is one of the conditions of thought. At the same time it 

 implies that this correspondence is at present only imperfectly 



