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I

THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY

1. Science is, fundamentally, a method of dealing with problems, and the initial step in any scientific undertaking is the determination of the problem to be investigated.

A survey of the present situation, in which men everywhere find themselves involved on one or the other side of a world-conflict, stimulates interest in the wide differences that exist between the many and various groups into which mankind is broken up. Thus, in the foreground, we are vividly conscious of differing characteristics when we speak of French, Belgians, and Italians, Germans, Austrians, and Magyars; and impressions associate themselves with the thought of Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders which are not suggested by mention of English, Scotch, and Irish. But the present conflict is not restricted to inheritors of a western European tradition, and the sense of difference becomes

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