242 PART V. WORKING STAGE. 



The clear thinker will be resolved to fix the objective signi- 

 fication of the terms Peace and War, and to seek for real in- 

 stead of presumed causes. If he sets out with such an intention, 

 he fulfils the demands of the Conclusion. 



108. Lastly. Reasoning hastily without fixing the problem, 

 we may be inclined, for instance, to ascribe India's industrial 

 backwardness to such factors as race, climate, tradition, and 

 religion. Yet if we attentively peruse the comprehensive Report 

 of the Indian Industrial Commission, 1916-1918, we learn that 

 such a conclusion would be decidedly dubious. The Commissioners 

 find that the intensive industrialism of the West is due to definite 

 causes, such as nation-wide elementary education, lower and higher 

 technical instruction and training, hygienic and sanitary reforms, 

 legislative protection of the worker, facilities for land acqui- 

 sition and banking, and, above and through all, to Government 

 support and initiative. Accordingly, the Report concludes in 

 effect that the industrial immaturity of India is no greater than 

 would be anticipated in the circumstances of any Western 

 country, and the Commissioners confidently expect that with 

 the necessary reforms realised, India will enter as an equal 

 the comity of highly developed industrial nations. Could one 

 not, we venture to ask, extend the Commissioners' conclusions 

 to all so-called backward peoples and races? Must we not be 

 as definite as the Indian Commissioners before we affirm that 

 an unbridgeable difference exists between one people or race 

 and another in any cultural direction whatsoever? 



The frequent failure to define the problem to be solved is 

 not seldom the cause that an enquiry proves comparatively 

 barren, or is unnecessarily cumbersome and protracted. Granted, 

 however, that the nature of the problem under investigation has 

 been determined as precisely as circumstances permit, we proceed 

 to examine the detailed facts through inspection, observation, 

 and experiment. Before doing this, however, we shall consider 

 certain problems allied to the one discussed in this Conclusion. 



CONCLUSION 15. 



Need of Exact Terminology, of Conclusions in the Form of 

 Precise Definitions, and of Extreme Definiteness in Thought 



and Statements. 1 



109. (A) EXACT TERMINOLOGY. The need for simple, 

 exactly defined, fixed, and universally accepted terms, as well 

 as for a sufficiency of these, is commonly recognised. This 

 topic, however, need not be laboured, seeing the common 

 scientific practice which leaves little to be desired in this 



1 "Everything relating both to bodies and virtues in nature [should] be 

 set forth (as far as may be), numbered, weighed, measured, defined." (Bacon, 

 Parasceve.) "Practical working comes of the due combination of physics 

 and mathematics." (Ibid.) 



