THE AIM AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 137 



construction out of certain data by means of the concept of a 

 transference of something (" energy ") that remains constant in 

 amount. We seem to have here the thought which Professor 

 James expresses in his article on Humanism and Truth* and 

 the writers of the essay on The Nature of the Hypothesis.^ 

 According to this thought Eeality is not the same after our 

 judgment as before ; it is " increased and elevated " by the 

 act of judgment. The implication seems to be that scientific 

 judgments simply continue a process wjiich " common-sense " 

 judgments begin. There are aspects of the two .processes of 

 judgment of which this notion of continuity holds good ; we 

 may grant to Messrs. Ashley and Dewey that the hypothesis 

 is a predicate, and to Mach and Professor James that the 

 concepts, both of " thing " and " energy," are economical. 

 But, as I have already pointed out, " the secondary construc- 

 tions " of Science which correspond to the " reality qualified 

 by an ideal content" of the ordinary judgment contain no 

 element that is not drawn from the common-sense stratum of 

 consciousness. For example, if one body is cooling while 

 another is simultaneously growing warmer, the secondary 

 construction in which these primary facts are synthesised 

 contains besides these facts merely the thought of another 

 thing being transferred from one body to the other. On the 

 other hand, the synthesis by which we bind the various qualities 

 into the "thing" does not present us with anything analogous 

 to this. The secondary construction is of a totally different 

 character from the elements ; the process does not reach its 

 end by the j.deal addition of a new element of the same type. 

 Further, the hypothesis has, we have shown, merely a transient 

 function. Setting aside purposes of exposition and convenience 

 in conceptual handling, its function is to point the way to 

 the discovery of new facts, including relations, and then to 



* P. 468. 



t In Studies in Logical Theory, ed. Dewey, 1903. 



