SECTION 22 OBSERVATION.' 313 



CONCLUSION 22. 



Need ol Collecting the Largest Number of Leading Facts and 

 Ascertaining the Unlike as well as the Like. 



155. (A) ABUNDANCE OF LEADING FACTS. Out of 

 the multitude of methodological Conclusions it would be diffi- 

 cult to select many which are more gravely sinned against 

 than the present one, and with such dire consequences. For 

 this reason, we encounter references to such a need in several 

 of the Conclusions. It is the besetting fault of the average 

 thinker of to-day to assume that the one or few facts which 

 he professes to have discovered, are all the facts relevant to 

 the issue. 1 Thus the student of methodology has repeatedly 

 occasion to observe that whole systems of thought are grounded 

 on some few, out of a vast number, of relevant facts. Instead 

 of patiently collecting all that is material to a subject, the 

 majority of investigators shout Eureka! when they are only 

 at the threshold of their preliminary examination. And to 

 aggravate matters, it is common for one investigator with a 

 handful of facts to oppose another who is equally placed, on 

 the assumption that the two handfuls are necessarily irrecon- 

 cilable and that one of the handfuls comprises all the needful 

 data. Naturally, therefore, those inquirers who regard their 

 task as completed when it is scarcely begun, contribute very 

 little to intellectual progress, and hence it happens that advance 

 is drearily slow and proceeds by an interminable series of 

 corrections of older views until at last, in zigzag fashion, the 

 comprehensive truth is reached. Such a mode of progression 

 is assuredly as wasteful as it is questionable. 



The inquirer should accordingly assume that only a prolonged 

 investigation yielding an extensive number of material facts 

 justifies any important or definite conclusions. For example, 

 the present author might have been satisfied with two or three 

 of the items in the heading of Conclusion 25. Instead, he did 

 not cease for many years to attempt to add to the list of 

 qualifications, and he has no doubt that additions of equal and 

 greater importance to those quoted are possible. Similarly, 

 with the sub-points in Conclusions 19 and 20, or with the number 

 of the Conclusions, or indeed with the general text of the Con- 

 clusions. Everywhere where it is not a question of direct observa- 

 tion, of generalising, or of more or less manifest relations, as 

 in Conclusions 27 and 28, nothing remains but persistently to sup- 

 plement material details and resolutely to dismiss the idea of 

 finality. If these details can be afterwards welded together and 

 augmented by a process of generalisation or deduction, this is 

 a matter for felicitation, but separate important facts apposite 



1 "That fashion of taking few things into account, and pronouncing with 

 reference to a few things, has been the ruin of everything." (Bacon, 

 Parasceve.) 



