392 PART V. WORKING STAGE. 



SECTION XXVIIL CLASSIFICATION. 



CONCLUSION 33. 

 Need of Judicious Classification. 



206. Language is a vast repository of classifications. Let 

 us analyse an imaginary example. Suppose the vague idea of 

 good enters the primitive mind. Then it is an important step 

 in advance for that mind to evolve the idea of not-good or bad. 

 The primitive man makes headway, again, by conceiving the 

 individual good as becoming and ceasing, and by discriminating 

 in two directions, namely in relation to quality and quantity 

 very good and very bad ; and better, best ; worse, worst. Hav- 

 ing reached a higher stage, he then refines the very into (say) 

 imperceptibly, just perceptibly, perceptibly, slightly, passably, 

 fairly, moderately, appreciably, distinctly, considerably, con- 

 spicuously, substantially, almost completely, completely, abso- 

 lutely, extremely, and the good into countless virtues and duties, 

 e.g., kindness, honesty, uprightness, truthfulness, purity, self- 

 control. He further subdivides each of these subsidiary classes 

 in an analogous manner, and the adjectives he enriches by 

 prefixing to them a series of delicately discriminating adverbs. 



Particulars tend thus progressively to become generals and 

 facts become more or less coherently ranged into classes. Thus 

 the early Greeks adopted a fourfold classification of the multi- 

 tude of virtues into Justice, Temperance, Courage, and Prudence ; 

 St. Paul preached the three graces Faith, Hope, and Love ; and 

 the French at the time of their Great Revolution introduced 

 the inspiring patriotic motto Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality. 

 We may also imagine that almost simultaneously with the 

 development of the confused conception of the good, the ideas 

 of the true and the beautiful struggled into being, and, accord- 

 ingly, that after aBons of development men select the phrase 

 the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, as most fitly expressing 

 what man most deeply aspires to, adding later to this trio, the 

 Hygienic. In this way more or less discriminative analysis 

 proceeds historically side by side with more or less discrimina- 

 tive classification till we obtain the highest or summum genus, 

 as Being and Action, on the one hand, and the lowest, or in- 

 fima species, such as electrical and arithmetical unit, on the 

 other. Not until, however, the sciences emerge from the incipient 

 stage, and a rudimentary methodology appears on the scene, 

 is there a consistent attempt at rigid classification or division 

 on the basis of exhaustive pan-human enquiries and tests. For 

 this reason classification in daily life is as common as it is 

 tentative in character, and on the same account the last word 

 of methodology may probably be the gradual reconstruction 

 of language on a strictly methodological foundation involving 

 a comprehensive classification. 



