SECTION 20. STUDIES PREPARATORY TO ALL INVESTIGATIONS. 159 



has kept a faithful diary of matters or names he forgot, wrong 

 words he used, dreams he experienced, thoughts he suppressed, 

 and who had observed the origination of nervousness, would 

 be probably appalled on how ethereal a foundation a mighty 

 structure can be raised in the absence of methodological think- 

 ing. Taking life as a whole, as it passes from moment to 

 moment, and men and women in the mass, at least in certain 

 countries, sex has almost invariably no significant part to play ; 

 suppressed and disguised sex thoughts, save at certain junc- 

 tures, prove to be rare in the waking and dream life of all but 

 the few depraved or diseased; 1 fully conscious ideas often drive 

 individuals into insanity (Lady Macbeth and many in similar 

 positions); and overexertion and economic anxieties, and scores 

 of other causes, lead to nervous instability. A truth appli- 

 cable to a microscopic part of life, and valuable in itself, is in 

 this way metamorphosed into a gigantic and monstrous false- 

 hood because of lax methodological canons. Here the blame 

 lies less on the originator, whose time and thought are absorbed 

 in endeavouring to detect a new truth, than on the scholarly 

 sympathisers who could readily descry the limitations of the 

 theory, but unjustifiably fail to do this. As a result of this 

 neglect of methodological canons, entire generations are fre- 

 quently deluded by theories whose truth or error it would be 

 easy to ascertain in a methodological age. 



70. Perhaps the acid test of the need of a recognised 

 methodology is the state of logic during the last half century. 

 Let us dispassionately, and without acidity, apply this test. A 

 large number of manuals of logic have been published during 

 this period, mostly entitled Logic, Deductive and Inductive. In 

 almost all cases, even where the title was different, the first 



1 Normal mental life is honeycombed with half-suppressed, and especially 

 half-disguised, thoughts of every class. For instance, many individuals are 

 keenly critical of certain defects in others without noticing that the corres- 

 ponding defects in themselves induce them to fix their attention on the 

 same defects in their neighbours. Or they may constantly seem to dread 

 being tempted by others, when this is merely due to disguised self-indul- 

 gence. Or men, as is so often the case, will find "reasons" for rejecting 

 an unwelcome truth, quite unconscious that aversion to what is unwelcome, 

 and not reverence for truth, is the motive. In a society so complex and 

 so ill organised as ours, half-suppressed and half-disguised thoughts must be 

 of necessity very common in every direction where difficulties are en- 

 countered. (See 82.) Moreover, a thought sharply dismissed has no rever- 

 berations, as homely experiments will prove (see also end of 97), and 

 fixing a thought will equally lead to its definite dismissal. It is only when 

 we half-heartedly turn away from thoughts, or pretend that we dismiss them, 

 or half-coquet with them that they haunt us. However, this is true uni- 

 versally, underlies all sustained cogitations, and according to the life-history 

 of an individual or a people, the type of half-submerged thought may vary 

 indefinitely. Probably local reasons, imperfectly apprehended, suggested to 

 Prof. Freud that sex is the controlling factor of the conscious and sub-con- 

 scious life. Living in other regions, intoxicants, worldly ambition, religion, 

 for instance, would have appeared to Freud as constituting men's inmost 

 desire. 



