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PART V. WORKING STAGE. 



ment machine is too frequently a gigantic treadmill where 

 mighty efforts produce intangible results. The intentions of 

 the bureaucrat, we perceive, are immaculate; but he is not 

 alert enough, and virtually strangles the great hopes reposed 

 in him. Not until the government machine has been converted 

 into an organism, will it be an instrument of social progress. 

 An alert community will insist on, and carry through, a radical 

 reform of public services, with the object that these services 

 should successfully compete in efficiency with the best com- 

 mercial, industrial, and scientific services. 



Habitual alertness, lastly, will be immensely . aided by the 

 conscious assumption that all variations, however common or 

 slight, as in the size, shape, foliage, flowers, vigour, or resistance 

 of plants, should be regarded as demanding elucidation and 

 explanation, and as possibly exemplifying far-reaching principles. 



154. (B) UNREMITTING CONCENTRATION The mind 

 should be ceaselessly concentrated in all scientific work, and 

 never be allowed to be greatly or entirely relaxed. Only in 

 this manner are we likely to escape superficiality and error, 

 and make certain that the wheel of progress shall perpetually 

 revolve and advance, for with the diverse mental powers 

 unstrung, we become mechanical and our work is of necessity 

 indifferently performed. The thinker reflects strenuously without 

 intermission, and he who would be a thinker must needs act 

 thus. To contend, therefore, that thought is only requisite at 

 certain defined critical moments in an enquiry, is to display 

 inadequate insight into the complexity of phenomena or into 

 the procedure of successful men of science. Novel facts may 

 present themselves at any moment, and old facts may appear 

 in a new light when a concentrated mind observes them. Every 

 situation or problem we are confronted with ought to call out 

 our best energies of thought. There are no indifferent details, 

 no automatic parts, one might say, in a scientific enquiry, any 

 more than in an up-to-date business transaction or in true art. 

 It is probably a grave misapprehension to assume that the 

 thinker need exercise no effort as a rule, and that he need 

 only think at intervals. In all affairs of life the contrary is 

 -true, and the more strenuous, and continuously strenuous, we 

 are, the more our powers will develop, whilst habitual absence 

 of strenuoushess will reduce our capacities to negligibility. It 

 is likewise 'an error to suppose that mental effort is exhausting 

 or impossible to the average mind; for, most probably, the 

 normal individual may become, through practice, accustomed 

 to hard mental as to hard physical exertion, the harder the 

 more intelligently and the more ceaselessly he practises. 



Our conclusion is, then, that it is the distinguishing mark of 

 a properly conducted scientific enquiry that in all its phases 

 habitual alertness and unremitting concentration are exhibited. 



