The Function of Method 89 



consists, we may have its use or function explained, or we may be 

 given a definition of it. Of all these meanings of a phenomenon 

 or process perhaps the least satisfactory is the definition. There 

 is something about beginning with a definition that seems contrary 

 to the natural order of thought. Definitions are really the farther 

 end of the process of thought. If concepts are to be organic parts 

 of our thought they cannot be given to us ready-made as moulds 

 out of which, by the simple process of filling in a content, we can 

 turn ideas. They are forms of thought in the sense that there 

 must be certain characteristic and essential ways in which the 

 mind's activity functions, but these are subjective conditions of 

 thought and not the formulae, concepts, or definitions in which 

 we register the results of thought. 



In the natural order of the mind's working we can only form 

 a true definition at the end of our consideration of a given aspect 

 of experience, when we have thoroughly become acquainted with 

 the aspect or phenomenon and have separated the essential from 

 the accidental, the permanent from the evanescent. Hence in seek- 

 ing to understand the meaning of control as a function of method, 

 we will attempt to work towards the possibility of a definition 

 through an analysis of various uses of the term that are implied 

 in different spheres of experience, rather than, in a more dogmatic 

 and deductive fashion, to start from the definition and elaborate 

 its implications. 



A brief glance at the obvious and familiar instances of control 

 of one kind or another that we meet in everyday experience in- 

 dicates two broad general classes into which the concept divides 

 itself: one of these is objective, external, and mechanical in char- 

 acter : and the other is subjective, internal, and organic. A closer 

 examination will indicate the specific points of difference between 

 these two phases of control, and will emphasise the significance 

 of the latter in the method of experience. 



(i) Perhaps the most prevalent, as well as the popular, con- 

 ception of control is that of a more or less arbitrary imposition 

 of superior power from an external source. From this point of 

 view we are controlled in a large number of ways every day of 

 our lives : the regular sequence of day and night, the vagaries of 

 the weather and the variations of climatic conditions, the avail- 

 able supply of food, the unavoidable routine of business, and 

 travel — all these, to a greater or less degree, control our actions. 



