METHOD IN SCIENCE 9 



considered as a closed system or organism, can throw light 

 upon special points of physiology, pathology, and biology, 

 or even on debatable points in physics, such a statement 

 will not easily meet with assent. But the fact remains 

 that those who reject it still admit that the laws of physics 

 rule everywhere, and that the doctrines of energetics can be 

 seen in whatever place work is being done. To admit so 

 much, and refuse to see that in all phenomena there must be 

 discoverable essential points of likeness, is a contradiction. 

 And to say, even if there are real likenesses which enable 

 us to use such a method as a key to discovery, that the 

 time is not yet come, or the knowledge acquired, for such 

 an organon to be used, is simply an assertion without 

 proof. To go on merely accumulating facts, and we must 

 remember that no " fact ° is a fact until it is made part 

 of a whole, is after all labourer's work, and within the power 

 of any one with diligence. We may reflect curiously on the 

 truth that the national neglect of science is again repeated 

 by many men of science themselves when they refuse to 

 recognize the place of fresh thought in their work, or, by 

 reason of their conservatism, place more than reasonable 

 difficulties in the way of those who try to co-ordinate their 

 observations. 



The logical method here advocated, if it has its dangers, 

 is of peculiar suggestiveness. To apply observations in a 

 well-known science to one in a state of less order, of which 

 the general laws seem still unknown, requires, it would 

 seem, less skill than the art of selecting certain points in 

 the obscurer study, which show that some general law is at 

 work, and using them to solve problems in the more 

 advanced science. To put this as clearly as possible, it 

 may be said that while sociologists need find no difficulty 

 in applying with success the analogies of bodily disorders, 



