SECTION 20. STUDIES PREPARATORY TO ALL INVESTIGATIONS. 195 



have flourished. Yet there is here no real analogy. If, for 

 example, we desire to know what a lump of ore is composed of, 

 we conduct a variety of complicated experiments ; but inasmuch 

 as the mode of our procedure in this case is the outcome of 

 aeons of. inventions and discoveries traditionally preserved, 

 the detailed examination of our procedure tells us nothing in 

 regard to our inborn "intelligence". To ascertain the latter, we 

 ought to examine an individual entirely without education, or 

 think of the "intelligence" of man before he acquired the 

 rudiments of culture. For the same reason, experiments on 

 animals which seek to elicit their mental capacity, are mislead- 

 ing if they are based on the supposition that all animal species 

 have the same wants, interests, or capacities as man. In such 

 experiments we should allot to each animal species its own 

 proper tasks, and decline to be deceived by vague analogies. 



In the life of practice, however, when inventiveness or re- 

 sourcefulness are desirable, analogical reasoning is of some value. 

 Yet here also we should beware of dubious analogies, such as 

 the following one where different species and distinct breeds 

 are compared to a chance collection of human individuals form- 

 ing generally neither separate species nor distinct breeds: "Sup- 

 pose a contractor had in his stable a miscellaneous collection 

 of draft animals, including small donkeys, ponies, light horses, 

 carriage horses, and fine dray horses, and a law were to be 

 made that no animal in the stable should be allowed to do 

 more than 'a fair day's work' for a donkey. The injustice of 

 such a law would be apparent to every one. . . . And the 

 difference between the first-class men and the poor ones is 

 quite as great as that between fine dray horses and donkeys." 

 (F. W. Taylor, Shop Management, p. 189.) As Davy stated : 

 "Analogy is the fruitful parent of error." 



84. (B) UTILISATION OF EXISTING KNOWLEDGE.- 

 There is considerable room for utilising knowledge acquired in 

 the past, which knowledge may be roughly said to fall within 

 five categories: 



(a) General knowledge, such as this suggesting that; one, 

 many, all; beginning, middle, end; rise, fall; yes, no; infant, 

 child, adolescent, adult ; and all most widely recognised relations 

 and facts. Whilst criticism should be unsparing here, it must 

 be tempered by the recollection that this kind of elemental 

 knowledge enshrines the foundation of all the sciences, man's 

 first and greatest effort to think humanly. 1 



1 "The child growing up learns, along with the vocables of his mother 

 tongue, that things which he would have believed to be different are, in 

 important points, the same. Without any formal instruction, the language 

 in which we grow up teaches us all the common philosophy of the age. 

 It directs us to observe and know things which we should have overlooked; 

 it supplies us with classifications ready made, by which things are arranged 

 (as far as the light of bygone generations admits) with the objects to which 



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