150 PART III. INTRODUCTORY. 



vance remains yet to be systematically recorded, if we abstract 

 the incomplete work accomplished in this treatise. Accordingly 

 Dame Fortune still decides as a rule what the method pursued 

 by any person shall be. That is, the outcome of an enquiry 

 may be a rambling essay, without commencement, middle, or 

 end. It may represent a mere formal treatment of a subject, 

 regardless of the facts of the case. It may be a deductive 

 statement, starting from some monstrous assumption, or from 

 a legitimate hypothesis. It may deal with a fraction of a sub- 

 ject or with the Universe itself. It may be determined almost 

 entirely by preconceptions, or maintain a hoary thesis of the 

 schools. In reality, the unaided intelligence is prone to disregard 

 everything but plausible coherence in argument and an enumera- 

 tion of a few affirmative instances of a more or less specious 

 character, whilst it tends to be sublimely unconscious of metho- 

 dical and cautious observation, measurement, use of instruments, 

 experiment, generalisation, deduction, verification, definition, 

 and whatever else a methodology of science postulates. 



In these circumstances we can only expect what we find 

 a countless host of lectures and publications, a clashing of 

 opinions, a war of words, a struggle to make antagonistic theo- 

 ries triumph, with glimpses of the truth discernible here and 

 there. Judging by what man is able to compass in any depart- 

 ment of life without helps, being kept back by "the mist of 

 tradition, or the whirl and eddy of argument, or the fluctuations 

 and mazes of chance and of vague and ill-digested experience", 1 

 it is incumbent on us to consider as natural this slow and tor- 

 tuous progress in knowledge. An ideal methodology would 

 guide the man of science from the inauguration to the termina- 

 tion of his enquiry, and render it almost impossible for him to 

 go far astray. (See especially Conclusions 2, 5, 17, 19, 27, and 28.) 

 At such a consummation the methodologist must aim ; but since 

 even moderate perfection is the leisurely product of the ages, 

 he can only offer a work which shall form a stepping-stone 

 towards a growingly more accurate and complete methodology. 

 Yet the ideal should never be lost sight of by him, if only 

 because it will spur him on to essay his best, and because it 

 will convince him that even his best is something destined to 

 be far, far excelled. It is in this chastened mood that the series 

 of Conclusions which follow have been formulated, and it is 

 with the intention of supplying a bird's-eye view of these Con- 

 clusions that a summary of them is herewith subjoined. 



I. GENERAL SUMMARY. 



63. (A) Preparatory Stage, (a) We commence our enquiry 

 by establishing the need of methodological procedure. (Con- 

 clusion 1.) (b) We show the desirability, the nature, and the 



1 Bacon, Novum Organum, bk. 1, 82. 



