290 



PART V.-WORKING STAGE. 



that in downright honest meditations of an original character the 

 process of mental synthesis is exceedingly circuitous and tortuous. 

 Indeed, steady continuity of strenuous and correct thought 

 becomes, in the circumstances, impossible, and the keenest efforts 

 are often unaccompanied by dependable results. It is probably 

 for this reason that in research work much is frequently made of 

 little, that the initial stage is mistaken for the final one, and that 

 thinkers and artists rapidly sink into mental grooves and abide 

 therein for the rest of their lives. Anything to escape the 

 primordial mental chaos. 



Instead, therefore, of undertaking the unprofitable task of 

 sketching in detail a moving mental anarchy occasionally re- 

 lieved by the results of the application of a few precipitated cul- 

 tural rules, we must demand the rationalisation and socialisation 

 of thought on methodological models. Assuming this to be 

 accomplished, say to the extent delineated in this work, this 

 Sub-Section would draw the picture of the concrete process of 

 thought when any particular problem let it be the ethics of 

 journalism or the theory of art for art's sake is submitted for 

 consideration. Unfortunately, the present author, who is forever 

 learning and almost forever unlearning, cannot flatter himself 

 that he is in a position to provide such an account. Whilst 

 he hopes, for his own and for his readers' sake, that he has 

 profited by his methodological enquiries, there is none of the 

 consecutiveness and solidity in his concrete cogitations that one 

 would have a right to look for, say, in the third generation of 

 trained methodologists. All that he can therefore do is to pro- 

 pose that this enquiry be adjourned to the day when some one 

 will undertake it who, under propitious conditions, has been, 

 from infancy, thoroughly trained to reflect methodologically. 

 Since thought consists, on the psychological side, of the cross- 

 classification of memories, and since such cross-classification 

 may be enormously simplified and systematised, it certainly 

 appears as if the ideational thinking process of the future will 

 be as superior to that of our day as our most highly developed 

 machines exceed in efficacy the rude implements of primitive 

 man. 



145. We will venture nevertheless on an illustration to 

 elucidate the position. Some twelve years prior to this paragraph 

 being penned, the present writer was responsible for a series 

 of magazine articles on the moral education of children. He 

 concluded the series by submitting how unreasonable it was to 

 assume that systematic experimental practice should be required 

 in all other subjects of the school curriculum where action was 

 involved, and yet to deplore man's moral juvenility although 

 neglecting systematic experimental moral practice. It being 

 conceded that this criticism was partly suggested by the author's 

 methodological activities, it may be admitted that, roughly 

 speaking, the elaboration of the criticism entailed no difficulties 



