244 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



behaviour therein, and record the difference which their 

 presence makes in our world, they are subjects. not merely 

 of knowledge but of the systematic and consecutive 

 investigation which we call science. But, the objector may 

 contend, these unanalysable data, if they are to be the 

 subject of scientific treatment, must be of a mechanical 

 character, and lend themselves to mathematical computa- 

 tion. This is in substance to identify science with mathe- 

 matics. But for this identification there is no warrant in 

 the postulates of thought. These postulates no doubt lay 

 down that anything that exists must have its place in a 

 system of relations which, when adequately defined, will be 

 found to hold universally. But they say nothing whatever 

 as to the character of those relations, and the conditions of 

 universality and necessity do, in fact, attach as clearly to 

 the means which serve an end, or the functions which 

 together maintain an organic whole, as to the mechanical 

 sequence of cause and effect. The view that Purpose, 

 Value, the whole world of Mind that which owes its 

 discovery of mechanical laws to its ideal of order is itself 

 rooted in disorder, is due to an imperfect development of 

 critical method. It may be added that this view becomes 

 a paradox which verges on contradiction when it is sug- 

 gested that the mind actually implants the order that exists 

 in matter, while remaining in its own nature essentially 

 anarchical. 



Analysis then is not destined to resolve everything into 

 terms which can enter into a mathematical equation. Nor 

 does analysis express the entire movement of thought. It 

 may be said to have a direct and an indirect function. Its 

 direct function is to clear up what is obscure and distinguish 

 what is confused. Thus we resolve an ambiguous or 

 cloudy conception into two or more distinct, though allied, 

 conceptions of definite and constant meaning. For 

 instance, a familiar economic analysis resolves 'profits' 

 as popularly conceived into elements of interest, rent, 

 earnings of management and so forth. The work of 

 analysis is here closely parallel to that of careful discrimina- 

 tive attention in the field of sense-perception, which, as 

 we look closely at a picture or long and carefully at a view, 



