,48 THE AIM AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 



domestic context would give it, to the profound and pathetic 

 significance it has on the dying lips of King Lear.* 



The point in question could be illustrated indefinitely, 

 but it seems necessary to note only that in every case the 

 " system ? - in which an element finds its meaning must ulti- 

 mately be an apperceptive system. This term, although it" 

 appears to have lost its forjner vogue in psychology, *s 

 yet, perhaps, the best available to suggest the integral, the 

 . vital connection of such systems with the past experience and 

 present interests of an individual consciousness the connec- 

 tion which is part of what I have already sought to suggest 

 by speaking of Science as a conative process. No treatment, 

 in fact, which isolates the efforts that have generated Science 

 from their psychological milieu can hope to do justice to its 

 subject, the true nature of which can only be brought out by 

 placing the scientific process in its proper position in a Natural 

 History of processes which all aim at rendering the Objective 

 intelligible. Only by following such a method is it possible 

 t6 reach a clear understanding of the relations to one another 

 of the various elements which a cross section of contemporary 

 scientific thought would exhibit. 



15. 



Among the interpretations of the Objective which demand 

 comparison with the scientific, the most important from the 

 point of view of distribution is "animism," the system of 

 beliefs upon which are based those practices of " magic " which 

 not only are found to-day under curiously similar forms 

 . among all savage races, but also have preceded the existing 

 modes of thought among all civilised peoples. Indeed, the 

 researches of authors like Professor Frazerf have revealed 

 these ancient ideas still persisting widely beneath the modern 



* Act v, scene iii. 



t J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 2nd ed., i, p. 74. 



