148 PART HI.- INTRODUCTORY. 



dynamic facts, and expeditiously and discriminatingly extend and 

 apply them to all related cases, near and remote, self-revealed 

 and obscure, his interest being centred in one or a very few prob- 

 lems. Or we may vary this by stating that the end of an enquiry 

 should be (a) one or a moderate number of tolerably original, 

 comprehensive, and important conclusions, including theoretical 

 and practical applications possessing the same character; and 

 (b) to determine precisely the nature and relations of certain 

 facts. With regard to the form which an enquiry should assume, 

 it ought to be as sharply defined as possible, continuous, and 

 fairly limited in scope. Everybody is aware of what is signified 

 by the enquiry being sharply defined. By its being continuous, 

 we mean that the ground of the enquiry shall not shift unless 

 the enquiry itself imperatively demands it; and by its being 

 fairly limited we imply that the range of the enquiry shall 

 neither extend, as with the ancients, to the embracing of all 

 or most knowledge as one's province, nor to be too restricted 

 as in many modern monographs, for in the former instance 

 we obtain nebulous, in the latter petty, generalisations. 



The object of a scientific methodology is to determine the 

 most efficient modes of conducting the operations of the human 

 understanding. 1 In the widest sense, therefore, a scientific 

 methodology relates to thinking in general, and, consequently, 

 to daily life as well as to methodical enquiries. Or, stated 

 formally and more ambitiously, a scientific methodology aspires 

 to transform men and women into as nearly as possible ideal 

 thinkers. Accordingly, the most effective means of collecting, 

 storing, teaching, and otherwise disseminating, truth are also 

 part of its province. For this reason, a coherent system of 

 methodology should concern itself as much with generalisation 

 as with deduction, -with theory as with practice, with certainty 

 as with probability, and with single events as with classes of 

 these. Different departments of methodology hence exist, 

 treating respectively of the discovery, the application, the 

 preservation, the teaching in educational establishments, and 

 the communication by other means, of truth. In this treatise, 

 however, we are chiefly- concerned with the methods leading 

 to the discovery of scientific truths. 



1 "The general problem of methodology is to show how we may apply 

 our natural mental activities, in such a way that starting from a given 

 state of thought and knowledge, we may attain the object of human thought 

 by an ideally perfect process; a process, that is, in which none but fully 

 determined concepts and adequately grounded judgments are employed." 

 (Sigwart, Logic, vol. 2, p. 8.) And Wundt (Logik, vol. 1, p. 1) writes: "Die 

 Logik hat Rechenschaft zu geben von denjenigen Gesetzen des Denkens, 

 die bei der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis wirksam sind." It is also true 

 that "every science develops its characteristic methods, methods fruitful in 

 their results, which it employs in dealing with a given class of problems' . 

 (Lotze, Logic, vol. 2, p. 174.) 



2 Incidentally the problem of general efficiency is somewhat exhaustively 

 treated in this work. See Index, and especially Conclusion 10. 



