842 SRODIES HORTONS) 
theorizing should be restrained and the simple determination of 
facts should take its place. The effort was to make scientific 
study statistical instead of causal. Because theorizing in nar- 
row lines had led to manifest evils theorizing was to be con- 
demned. The reformation urged was not the proper control 
and utilization of theoretical effort but its suppression. We do 
not need to go backward more than a very few decades to find 
ourselves in the midst of this attempted reformation. Its weak- 
ness lay in its narrowness and its restrictiveness. There is no 
nobler aspiration of the human intellect than the desire to com- 
pass the causes of things. The disposition to find explanations 
and to develop theories is laudable in itself. It is only its ill- 
placed use and its abuse that are reprehensible. The vitality of 
study quickly disappears when the object sought is a mere collo- 
cation of unmeaning facts. 
The inefficiency of this simply repressive reformation becom- 
ing apparent, improvement was sought in the method of the 
working hypothesis. This has been affirmed to be che scientific 
method. But it is rash to assume that any method is ¢#e method, 
at least that it is the ultimate method. The working hypothesis 
differs from the ruling theory in that it is- used as a means of 
determining facts rather than as a proposition to be established. 
It has for its chief function the suggestion and guidance of lines 
of inquiry; the inquiry being made, not for the sake of the 
hypothesis, but for the sake of the facts and their elucidation. 
The hypothesis is a mode rather than anend. Under the ruling 
theory, the stimulus is directed to the finding of facts ‘for the 
support of the theory. Under the working hypothesis, the facts 
are sought for the purpose of ultimate induction and demonstra- 
tion, the hypothesis being but a means for the more ready devel- 
opment of facts and their relations. 
It will be observed that the distinction is not such as to pre- 
vent a working hypothesis from gliding with the utmost ease 
into a ruling theory. Affection may as easily cling about a 
beloved intellectual child when named an hypothesis as if 
named a theory, and its establishment in the one guise may 
