22 PART I. THE PROBLEM. 



lutist methodology will therefore become practicable only in 

 the remote future, when the present state of knowledge will 

 have been almost infinitely transcended, that is, when most of 

 the leading facts of physics, biology, and specio-physics, will 

 have been ascertained and correlated into a closely-knit science 

 of the cosmos or cosmology. 



In the succeeding four Sections we shall discuss the scientific 

 acumen to be anticipated from individuals who are not deliber- 

 ately trained in accordance with methodological canons faith- 

 fully abstracted from modern scientific procedure at its best. 



SECTION II. THE INFANT AND CHILD MIND. 1 



6. Men often smile at the extravagant conclusions reached 

 by children (as when a child who has heard that a driver, arriv- 

 ing from a certain village, is called Leonard, inquires whether 

 all drivers hailing from that locality bear this name); yet a 

 circumspect study of infant life throws some light on the prob- 

 lems of methodology. 



We need not touch here on inherited aptitudes, or on the 

 learning, without imitation, of certain movements (such as 

 carrying the fingers to the mouth), nor the interesting stages 

 when by degrees concerted action ensues between pairs of 

 eyes and limbs, or collaboration develops between the several 

 senses. To enter into these genetic problems would lead us 

 too far afield. 



The first concept of interest to us which the child acquires 

 is that of "things". The eyes supply the infant with its in- 

 formation about the world beyond the finger tips, but this only 

 when objects move, omitting here strong light and glaring 

 colours which fascinate rather than teach anything. Hence 

 when the child watches a curtain moved by the wind, an ani- 

 mated face, a figure passing by, the waving branches of trees, 

 the inrushing tide, it gradually singles out the moving object 

 from the motionless surroundings. Only motion, on our part, 

 or on the part of a portion of our environment, appears to 

 yield the individuality and separateness whfeh adults associate 

 with things. 



At first, objects which pass .out of sight or out of the 

 grasp have passed out of existence for the child; but diverse 

 experiences teach him that out of sight is only out of mind. 

 The first truths learnt, then, by the infant are that objects 

 exist and persist; and, in an unreasoned way, no doubt, he 

 becomes convinced that all things exist and persist for ever 

 in the precise form in which he has sensed them. 



The next stage is an equally important one. Motion has 

 unlocked the secret of things, and now stationary objects, first 



1 See under Child in the Index of the author's The Mind of Man. 



