88 PART II. SOME IMPORTANT METHODOLOGICAL TERMS. 



ductory study of the chief static aspects of the phenomenon 

 investigated. 



32. (g) Far-reaching Antecedents. Finally, we must aim 

 at discovering far-reaching antecedents, because a vast collection 

 of trifling causes is as untractable and unsatisfactory methodo- 

 logically as a similar number of static facts and generalisations 

 of an equally restricted order. (Conclusion 25.) Science, that 

 is, seeks primarily to discover universal facts, or such as have 

 a high degree of generality: The process of generalisation 

 passed over in Mill's Canons, should enter therefore to a vital 

 extent into the conduct of any causal enquiry. 



33. (/*) Study of Effects. Nor should we overlook the 

 importance, methodologically, of studying effects, or causes as 

 effects and effects as causes. 



34. (/) The Methodological Meaning of the term Cause. 

 It is difficult to over-estimate the value of the discriminations 

 precipitated in names. Men have reasoned ever since the 

 dawn of humanity's career, and animals, in fact, also reason. 

 But it is one thing, in a desperate way, to grope for and stumble 

 on the truth, and quite another thing with deliberation and 

 method calmly to proceed to its conquest. The latter presupposes 

 a gradually developed terminology containing gradually attained 

 and clarified discriminations. The word Method thus suggests 

 that we should proceed methodically, a thought which is the 

 ultimate outcome of much strenuous experience and reflection. 

 And if instead of humbly and clumsily striving after some 

 dimly apprehended object, we speak of truth and of proof, or 

 of observation, generalisation, definition, and so forth, and 

 arrange them in a rigorously synthetic order, as in Conclusions 14 

 to 35, we are aware of having stripped off our animality 

 and having become men who can see, and know that they 

 can see, almost infinitely beyond the animal's horizon. In this 

 sense the word Cause embodies a profound methodological 

 discrimination. Deprived of this word and its meaning, we 

 should be tempted to analyse objects or follow processes without 

 noting that we had ignored a category capable of enormously 

 simplifying and rationalising our mental labours. We might 

 be satisfied with determining the accidental relations of uni- 

 formities, and thus miss an insight into their crucially important 

 permanent and necessary connections. If, therefore, we depre- 

 cate over-emphasis of the causal viewpoint, it is only because 

 it is also methodologically imperious to mete out justice to the 

 various other methodological discriminations arrived at by 

 mankind. In methodology, as in all other spheres of life, we 

 should beware against being biassed in favour of some frac- 

 tional part of a whole. 



We conclude, therefore, that an ordinary causal enquiry is 

 an enquiry into the more important unconditional and invariable 

 antecedents of certain phenomena. 



