256 



PART V. WORKING STAGE. 



language, which is to reflect our cogitations, shall be equally 

 perspicuous. Moreover, clarity of expression should not be the 

 outcome of painful toil, of a tortuous approximation to an ideal 

 of style through the medium of ceaseless emendations, but the 

 result of efficient training in earlier years. Else the actual 

 research work is impeded and interfered with, if it is not 

 seriously contracted and its quality materially depreciated. The 

 ripe thinker, in other words, should no more need to impart 

 clearness to his style by the sweat of his brow than be anxiously 

 concerned about his spelling and grammar. 1 Clarity of ex- 

 pression will, finally, react on language itself and permit the 

 allotting of definite meanings to definite articulate sounds, with- 

 out the apprehension that familiarity will breed contempt, or 

 that the words will be employed carelessly and be in this way 

 degraded and lose their definiteness. 



SECTION XXII. OBSERVATION. 2 



119. It is difficult to ascertain and examine the exact 

 fundamental facts underlying the process of observation as 

 such. We might, however, state that there needs to be some 

 circumscribing concept guiding us in our examination, that is, 

 we should search for similarities of a certain order and exclude 

 all other classes of similarities. If it is a question of the defini- 

 tion of a chair or table, for instance, we seek for general 

 similarities, and we neglect all special or individual ones, such 

 as material, colour, size, precise conformation, or ornamentation. 

 In fact, we always presuppose in investigations a general clas- 

 sification of phenomena, and endeavour to find similarities in 

 accordance with that classification. (See Section V, also Con- 

 clusion 3.) For this, reason, anything we can say in this work 

 on the subject, can only be in further elucidation of the re- 

 cognised mode of observing. Granted, then, a general pre- 

 paredness and a special object, we assume that in observation 

 we seek as a rule for intrinsic and important resemblances in 

 a group of individuals, and that we strive to divide this group 

 into as many important groups as possible, or merge it into a 

 wider group. We examine in this way a large assortment of 

 individual objects, and, having noted their features, we class 



1 He who is, broadly speaking, perfectly educated will have a perfect 

 command of the whole of the non-technical vocabulary. This in itself will 

 clarify thought and effectively aid in clarity of expression. A danger should 

 be, however, guarded against, that of being fascinated and satisfied with 

 clearness as such. 



2 The term Observation, in this Section and throughout the treatise, is 

 intended to include the term Examination observational and experimental 

 examination of physical and psychical objects, processes, and forces, of pro- 

 positions and proposals, of historical and other documents, of trains of 

 reasoning, of terms, of formulae, of statistics, etc. 



