142 PART //. SOME IMPORTANT METHODOLOGICAL TERMS. 



without help or force of instruments, just as in things intellec- 

 tual they have set to work with little else than the naked 

 forces of the understanding, very small would the matters 

 have been which, even with their best efforts applied in con- 

 junction, they could have attempted or accomplished." (Preface 

 to Novum Organum.) 



SECTION XVIIL CONCLUSION. 



60. The foregoing discussion has no pretensions to being 

 exhaustive; it only strives to clarify a few of the principal 

 terms employed in scientific methodology. The signification of 

 Concept, Abstraction, Comparison, Judgment, and of a multitude 

 of other logical terms, will be found dealt with in the works of 

 classical and inductive logicians. The methodological aspect of 

 the memory, the imagination, and the intelligence is treated in 

 Conclusion 18, and that of the methodological process as a 

 synthetic unity, in Conclusion 2. Our limited purpose in this 

 Second Part has been achieved if we have thrown some light 

 on certain vital terms, terms which we hope will receive in the 

 future closer attention from logicians. Our discussion at the 

 same time has made it manifest, we hope, that in sundry 

 departments pf knowledge methodological canons are honoured 

 in the breach rather than in the observance, even in respect 

 of such elementary matters as adequate preliminary observation 

 and detailed verification. 



We may now proceed to the consideration of the proposed 

 methods of thought which, we trust, fairly reflect on the whole 

 the process of modern scientific investigation at its best. 



