154 PA RT IV. PREPARATORY STAGE. 



apart from the process of collecting obscure facts, his work, 

 at least compared to that of a modern investigator, will be 

 almost like child's play. (See 114.) Indeed, all men and women 

 will be inventors and discoverers of an elevated order, and 

 comparatively little of secondary importance will need to be 

 imparted or learnt. The conception of the real and the possible 

 in this connection should act as a potent incentive to those who 

 desire to liberate mankind from groping ignorance and servile 

 dependence on chaotic traditions. 



PART IV. 

 PREPARATORY STAGE. 



SECTION XX. STUDIES PREPARATORY TO ALL INVESTIGA- 

 TIONS. 



CONCLUSION 1. 

 Need of Procedure being determined Methodologically. 



66. The assumption underlying all methodological think- 

 ing is that we should be conscious of the need of proceeding 

 methodologically. At present such consciousness can scarcely 

 be alleged to exist. Method to-day is mostly a matter of tradi- 

 tion, and fortunate are those sciences where the traditions are 

 of a superior order. 



In many of the social sciences, for instance, scientific method 

 is almost completely ignored. The writer on ethics, for ex- 

 ample, is as a rule unperturbed either in regard to making 

 sure of his facts or as to verifying his conclusions, unless in- 

 deed fugitive and haphazard attention to these is to be honoured 

 by such a name. He generalises, he deduces, he speculates, 

 he affirms and denies, irrespective of a stern and synthetic 

 guiding rule. No wonder, therefore, that ethical systems are 

 almost as plentiful as blackberry bushes in the country. Any 

 one with an exuberant imagination, well read in general, who 

 has acquainted himself with the airy speculations of the past, 

 can possess his own ethical universe of thought. 



If we turn to psychology, we are on a relatively higher plane, 

 since much is made here of facts ; but rigorous method is also 

 in this instance deplorably lacking, witness the almost universal 

 acceptance of commonplaces which are the bane of science- 

 relating to the nature of the sensations, attention, habit, me- 

 mory, imagination, ratiocination, pleasure and pain, emotions, 

 will, and touching almost everything else in psychology. No 

 wonder that Herbart, Thomas Brown, and James Mill, who wrote 

 about a century ago, are scarcely out of date, except perhaps 

 for part of their plain terminology. 



