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Everyone feels that his total power rises when he passes to a higher qualitative level of life.
In other words, thoroughness as a relative and qualitative matter, rather than only quantitative, can be appreciated by them. Any teacher who has tested them carefully in this respect is likely to agree to this assertion. It is as natural for a lot of children to condemn the mention of useless detail, because of its waste of time, as it is for them to condemn selfish or immoral conduct.
Whether during sleep the blood-vessels of the brain are fuller or less full than during waking, is still a moot point. Also the qualitative condition of the blood in the cerebral vessels is still a matter of discussion.
The conceptions with which the Scholastic-Aristotelian philosophy of nature sought to get at phenomena substantial forms, properties, qualitative change are thrown aside; their place is taken by matter, forces working under law, rearrangement of parts.
Or, to reduce the proposition to its most definite form undeveloped science is qualitative prevision: developed science is quantitative prevision. This will at once be perceived to express the remaining distinction between the lower and the higher stages of positive knowledge.
I based my argument on two facts, firstly, that modern psychology offers us a conception of human nature much truer, though more complex, than that which is associated with the traditional English political philosophy; and secondly, that, under the influence and example of the natural sciences, political thinkers are already beginning to use in their discussions and inquiries quantitative rather than merely qualitative words and methods, and are able therefore both to state their problems more fully and to answer them with a greater approximation to accuracy.
Wholes for purposes of education are not, however, physical affairs. Intellectually the existence of a whole depends upon a concern or interest; it is qualitative, the completeness of appeal made by a situation. Exaggerated devotion to formation of efficient skill irrespective of present purpose always shows itself in devising exercises isolated from a purpose.
Not so very long ago, the scholar was often content with qualitative observations. Many phenomena were studied without much trouble being taken to obtain actual measurements.
Once you subscribe to this first absurdity, all the others follow. Nothing would be easier, now, than to extend Zeno's argument to qualitative becoming and to evolutionary becoming. We should find the same contradictions in these. That the child can become a youth, ripen to maturity and decline to old age, we understand when we consider that vital evolution is here the reality itself.
When we generalize the current concepts of motion or force beyond individual displays and relative measures of quantity, we recognize their qualitative identity, and appreciate the logical unity under which we must give them abstract expression. This is the process, often unconscious, which has carried most original thinkers to monotheistic doctrines, no matter whence they started.
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