a famous German historian whose name matters to us not at all. This historian took it for granted that once upon a time people propagated themselves through incest, for in the first human families the brother was assigned to the sister. This theory is wholly based upon his still unconscious belief in Adam and Eve as the first and only parents of mankind. It is on the whole better to discover for oneself a modern world-philosophy, or at least to make use of some decent system which will prevent any errors of that kind.
One could put up with being despised as the possessor of a world-philosophy; but there is a greater danger. The public may come to believe the philosophy, beaten out by the constructive method, is to be regarded as a theoretical and objectively valid insight into the meaning of the world in general.
I must now again point out that it is an obstinate, scholastic misunderstanding not to be able to distinguish between a world-philosophy which is only psychological, and an extra-psychological theory, which concerns the objective thing. It is absolutely essential that the student of the results of the constructive method should be able to draw this distinction. In its first results the constructive method does not produce anything that could be called a scientific theory; it furnishes the psychological lines of development, a path so to say. I must here refer the reader to my book.
The analytic reductive method has the advantage of being much simpler than the constructive method. The former reduces to well-known universal elements of an extremely simple nature. The latter has, with extremely complicated material, to construct the further path to some often unknown end. This obliges the psychologist to take full account of all those forces which are at work in the human mind. The reductive method strives to replace the religious and philosophical needs of man, by their more elementary components, following the principle of the “nothing but,” as James so aptly calls it. But to construct aright, we must accept the developed aspirations as indispensable components, essential elements, of spiritual growth. Such work extends far beyond
