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PART V.-WORKING STAGE. 



position to record accurately their normal habits, whilst other- 

 wise we should be likely to furnish an account of a few graphic 

 or accidental details. Corrections for locality, climate, season, 

 age, sex, social stratum, special circumstances, would not, of 

 course, be neglected. 



(b) The just-mentioned rule may be extended to a season- 

 to-season rule in those instances where the stages are seasonal, 

 as with plants or some instincts and diseases, and beyond this 

 to stages of life, as when certain physiological and pathological 

 phenomena are connected more or less with an individual's age. 



(c) The same rule may be also adapted to periodic changes 

 and occurrences of any length, extensive or brief, as in astro- 

 nomy or molecular physics, and 



(d) to exhausting the varieties of any species or other object 

 by continuously searching in space, time, and consciousness 

 for divergences. 



(e) Another rule refers to vegetation. 1 A plant may be 

 studied from rootlets upwards; from the zygote stage to the 

 time it decays; in the interrelation of its parts, and in its 

 relation to soils, allied and neighbouring plants, altitude, 

 moisture, atmosphere, light, bacteria, insects, larger animals, etc. 



(/) A cousin of this rule comprehends animal life, though 

 here permanent standpoints are to be chosen for classes rather 

 than for the whole animal kingdom. Perhaps from head to 

 tail or to extremities of hind feet, from conception to dissolu- 

 tion, from cell to systems, of organs (alimentary system, cir- 

 culatory system, etc.) and to the system of systems (the or- 

 ganism) would satisfy methodologically in a general way in 

 respect of the higher animals and many of the lower. The 

 nature and the interrelations between the diverse organs would 

 be considered as well as relations to other members of the 

 species, to closely allied species, to enemies, to food supply, 

 to climate, and to the environment generally, animate and in- 

 animate, (a) and (b) would, of course,- apply to (e) and (/). 



(g) A further group is concerned with objects which have a 

 commencement, and which are not comprised in the previous 

 groups. Thus a book is studied from beginning to end; so, 

 too, an organic or other process, a law case, an experiment, 

 a road, a concert, the history of an individual, of a reign, of 

 an era, or of a country. 2 



(h) includes those aggregations of facts which cannot be 

 distributed under any of the above headings. Here arbitrarily 

 fixed standpoints are selected, that is, observing a ball, I fix 

 upon some arbitrary point or continuous line as the place 

 whence to proceed and whither to return in my examination. 



"If we are enquiring into the vegetation of plants, we must begin from 

 the very sowing of the seed." (Novum Organum, bk. 2, 41.) 



2 For some instances illustrating this rule, see Bacon's Novum Organum, 

 bk. 2, 5. 



