96 ' The Concept of Method 



standard-forming can never be explained genetically ; the study 

 of the evolution of standards is a study of facts, and is neither 

 a justification nor an explanation of them. At most, from the 

 evolutionary point of view, standards are categories of activity. 

 They are functional points of interaction between the ethical and 

 the non-ethical, between conscience and impulse. Consequently 

 the evolutionary significance of a standard is twofold : in the 

 first place, the very fact of its existence at all implies a relatively 

 high type of activity with a corresponding intellectual and moral 

 development. In the second place, its organic character, in com- 

 mon with all other factors of mind, indicates an inherent possi- 

 bility of development. The level of experience is raised from 

 the physical to the spiritual and spiritual laws are of a higher 

 order than physical laws. 



(2) Idealism. The existence of a standard is synonymous with 

 the possibility of idealism in any form. As long as there is a 

 distinction between the actual and the real, between the existent 

 and the ideal, there is implied some standard by which the differ- 

 ence is determined. There are standards of various qualities 

 corresponding to the various levels of evolutionary development, 

 and one may have, for instance, a standard which is little more 

 than a material copy or model, or an ideal to be realised in a given 

 material and through a special activity, or finally an archetype or 

 divine idea which can never be fully realised in the limitations of 

 earthly material or human mundane activities. As a standard- 

 ising method, Idealism has two functions : in the first place, 

 retrospectively and negatively, it indicates the disabilities of the 

 material, and its unsuitability for the realisation of the idea or con- 

 ception in question. It thus cuts off and eliminates the extraneous, 

 insignificant, meaningless elements, the logically and materially 

 accidental, and concentrates, so to speak, the essentials in a posi- 

 tive way by the very negative process of critical elimination. 

 In the second place, prospectively and positively. Idealism then 

 takes this nearest approximation to the ideal as the basis for fur- 

 ther idealisation and carries the standard to a higher level, from 

 which it will in turn react upon the earlier temporal material 

 realisation, and will lift it to a higher level of reality, and so 

 onward and upward in that continuous process of interaction be- 

 tween the ideal and the real which is the method of experience. 



