Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/124

108 value, not of history. To them applies the distinction of degree, higher and lower, not of time, earlier and later. What they are and mean in themselves, not their temporal setting, is the problem. To confound such distinctions is not only to get no help in understanding morality, but to go positively astray; it is to obscure that difference of value which is the unique factor in the case; and to explain away, not to explain, the essential reality. That an historical statement of any spiritual value is a hysteron proteron; that analysis of quality or intrinsic character, and tracing of genesis are distinct processes, have become fixed articles in the creed of the contemporary idealist. And no opportunity is lost to rehearse the creed. Many writers would have it that to discuss mind or morality in terms of the historical series, is to evidence such ignorance of rudimentary philosophical distinctions as to argue total unfitness for the task undertaken.

It is this wholesale denial of the possibility of using a given method with any fruitful and positive result, that makes it necessary to ask: What do we intend in science by inquiry into origins? and what do we secure for science by stating any matter in genetic terms? Is any purpose fulfilled by this mode of attack which is not within the competent jurisdiction of other methods? Possibly the method is abused in practice by its opponents because it is abused in theory by its upholders. The latter may think that through the use of the evolutionary method something is done which is not done, and which cannot be done; and fail to bring out the deep and large service that as matter of fact is rendered. Anyway, before we either abuse or recommend genetic method we ought to have some answers to these questions: Just what is it? Just what is to come of it and how?

An apparently circuitous mode of approach to these questions may be found most direct in the end. I see no way to get an adequate answer without taking up the nature of experimental method in science, and pointing out in what sense it also is a genetic method.

The essence of the experimental method I take to be control of the analysis or interpretation of any phenomenon by bringing to light the exact conditions, and the only conditions, which are