15 g PART IV. PREPARATORY STAGE. 



take the place of a bewildering mass of dubious precedents; 

 the chaos in administration, both private and public, is progres- 

 sively being removed; and general advance entails the ulti- 

 mate abolition of individual and collective error, inequality, and 

 discord. An interminable aggregation of general facts could 

 be thus collected to illustrate that the tendency towards homo- 

 geneity comports with the tendency towards progress. Apply- 

 ing other rules comprised in Conclusions 27 and 28, we should 

 learn by degrees that progress is compatible both with increase 

 and decrease of heterogeneity, and that retrogression may be 

 equally accompanied by an augmentation or diminution of dif- 

 ferentiation. It would hence become manifest that the law of 

 progress does not lie in the direction surmised by Herbert 

 Spencer. Utilising subsequently other methodological rules, 

 but of a constructive character, the true lav/ and cause of pro- 

 gress would be partly or wholly revealed. Indeed, the uni- 

 versal acceptance of a single and reliable system of methodology, 

 displacing the present blind groping, would of itself denote an 

 epoch-marking stage in human progress. 



69. Or consider a quite modern instance of precipitate 

 reasoning. Prof. Siegmund Freud, of Vienna, has developed a 

 theory, the substance of which is that sex is the predominant, 

 or rather the dominant, factor in life. 1 2 Hysteria and neur- 

 asthenia 3 are one of its fruits, as well as many forms of in- 

 sanity 4 , if not all; occurrences of forgetfulness and mistakes in 

 words have mostly the same origin 5 ; and dreams 6 are traced 

 to no other source. A few years have hardly elapsed, and 

 Freudism is threatening to become the fashion. In a sense the 

 theory as developed is complimentary to the moral atmosphere 

 of to-day, for it asserts that we hastily suppress our sex thoughts 

 and prevent them thus from forcing themselves into the strongly 

 illuminated focus of consciousness. However, according to Freud 

 these thoughts revenge themselves by masquerading as ever- 

 recurring innocent thoughts. Then, when the magician of the 

 Freud school is summoned by a patient, he produces a com- 

 plete and permanent change or cure, by transforming the sub- 

 conscious feelings and thoughts into conscious ones. Now there 

 is no reason in "the nature of things" as known to us, why 

 this theory should not be true. But is it well grounded ? This 

 seems not to be the case. Casual facts are cited in support, 

 a procedure which at best could only prove that such instances 

 occur. On the other side, any normal person who for a month 



1 Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie. 



- In England Freudism flourishes under the name of psycho-analysis and 

 the psychology of the unconscious, and has as a rule discarded the general 

 theory that sex reasons underlie all human abnormalities and defects. 



:! Studien fiber Hysteric. 



4 Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre. 



"' Zur Psydiopathologie des Alltagslebens. 



6 Die Traumdeutung . 



