90 The Concept of Method 



and control them in a way that admits of little interference 

 from us. 



But in addition to the control of these external phenomena 

 which constrain us in a physical way, there is the control which 

 is exercised by human, as opposed to natural, law. This jural 

 aspect represents a higher phase than that of control by physical 

 phenomena, because here the element of human consciousness 

 enters in as a dominating element. Here, too, the moral element 

 first appears, in so far as any individual is at liberty to act con- 

 trary to the law. Yet this factor of choice and freedom of action 

 is by the nature of the control imposed, reduced, in ideal at least, 

 to its minimum, either through the elimination of the conditions 

 necessary to the realisation of activity contrary to that legally de- 

 manded, or through the deterrent influences of predetermined 

 consequences that are practically prohibitive of transgression. 



We reach a higher ethical, though not so universal a stage 

 from the point of view of the content of the control involved, 

 when we come to that exercised in our experience by rules, pre- 

 cepts, maxims of action, conduct or thought. Here the range 

 of the control varies in strength from conditions where these 

 habitual rules and maxims take the place of organised legal en- 

 actments, as in the case of some savage tribes, down to the merest 

 counsels of expediency which guide many trivial daily acts. 



Here, however, the control is still imposed upon the individual 

 from without, and from a moral point of view conformity, to 

 rule or precept has little to check our estimates of moral strength. 

 As the criterion by which we judge is still an external one, there 

 must always be the conscious reference to the standard before the 

 extent of the conformity can be estimated. There is still the 

 dualism, then, that existed in the case of legal prescription be- 

 tween the element that controls conduct and the individual whose 

 act is to be judged or estimated; and as long as there is this 

 dualism there cannot be true freedom nor the highest kind of ac- 

 tivity. The conduct of life has not yet reached the level of an 

 art. Human spiritual life has not yet become a conscious process ; 

 its idea has not emerged as the motive force in experience. This 

 is realised only in the stage represented in the next and last con- 

 ception of control as a function of the method of experience. 



(2) There is, in any phase of common experience, a threefold 

 phase of development through which it is possible to pass. In the 



