352 Postscript 



tation is indispensable to anything even approaching a full 

 development of the organismal view. 



But nothing stands out more boldly from the pages of 

 this book than the insufficiency even yet, of actual knowledge 

 for making the standpoint complete. If therefore, I append 

 to my presentation a brief reference to the larger effect the 

 view has had on myself, and on this basis forecast what the 

 effect would be on thinking people generally were they to 

 make it their own, such a forecast will surely be in harmony 

 with the larger purpose of the book, even though the antici- 

 patory remarks have no place in the presentation itself. 



The long and laborious gathering and arranging of facts, 

 and weighing of natural evidence and formal arguments 

 which has constituted the development of the standpoint in 

 my own mind, has compelled me to re-examine and re-assess 

 the whole frame and fabric of my spiritual life. Nothing, so 

 far as I can tell, has escaped. Not my scientific knowledge 

 alone my professional stock-in-trade but all my ideas and 

 beliefs touching religion, art, society, politics, industry, per- 

 sonal relations, and private living, have come in for their 

 share of scrutiny and renovation. 



An exceedingly brief "synoptic" classification and char- 

 acterization * of the entire range of these effects can be 

 given in the terms of formal science and philosophy. 



As to classification, the effects fall into a two-fold group- 

 ing. One of the groups appertains to the great province of 

 the nature of knowledge; the other to the equally great 

 province of the nature of morals. 



The characterization of effects on the nature of knowl- 

 edge which seems to me most inclusive and most practically 

 significant, may be stated thus: By the validation of ob- 

 jective knowledge, largely through the principle of what I 

 have called standardization of reality, but partly through 



* See my essay, The Place of Description, Definition and Classifica- 

 tion (Ritter, 1918). 



