Note 31 — Chapter I · CONCERNING THE TWO KINDS OF THINKING

Wundt gives a striking description of the scholastic method in his “Philosophische Studien,” XIII, p. 345. The method consists “first in this, that one realizes the chief aim of scientific investigation is the discovery of a comprehensive scheme, firmly established, and capable of being applied in a uniform manner to the most varied problems; secondly, in that one lays an excessive value upon certain general ideas, and, consequently, upon the word-symbols designating these ideas, wherefore an analysis of word-meanings comes, in extreme cases, to be an empty subtlety and splitting of hairs, instead of an investigation of the real facts from which the ideas are abstracted.”