PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 



I. FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTION OF THIS TREATISE. 



1. A System of Scientific Procedure? Whewell 1 held that 

 an art of discovery is impossible, and, as if by contrast, 

 Macaulay- argued that all men instinctively practised this art. 

 Other thinkers have assured us that by familiarising ourselves 

 with any one science, our entire mode of thought becomes of 

 necessity scientific ; and still others that each science is unique, 

 and that consequently there cannot be a single methodology 

 embracing the whole field of knowledge. Finally, there are 

 few who do not shake their heads at the suggestion of framing 

 rules for the right conduct of the understanding. 



Lest the reader, impregnated with views such as those just 

 alluded to, lay this treatise aside without reading it, or peruse 

 it convinced that its underlying conception is vitiated by a 

 gross fallacy, it will be well to outline in this and the following 

 paragraphs the fundamental assumption pervading the whole 

 work. Whether we note the remarkably slow progress through 

 aeons upon aBons in the development of implements, or the 

 infinite efforts which have yielded modern science in all its 

 incompleteness ; whether we observe how microscopically small 

 have been the individual contributions of the men and women 

 of far renown, as we shall see, compared to the vast stock of 

 human acquisitions existing in this age, or the sick man's pace 

 in the evolution of political and economic institutions, we become 

 equally confirmed in our belief that the individual is first and 

 foremost a cultural being, vitally dependent on general human 

 progress, and virtually a zero if thrown back on himself. 



To cast this thought in the form of a tentative definition: 

 Man alone is primarily a civilisable or culturable being, that 

 is, Man alone possesses the power to absorb the substantial 

 part of a highly developed civilisation, together with the ability 

 of advancing this civilisation to an infinitesimal degree; or, 

 stated more abstractly and broadly, the stock of humanity's 



1 See 17. 



2 See 57. 



