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Just as no great commercial establishment can long survive without systematic management, so no great detective force can develop efficiency with chaos on the throne. Centralization, through closer and ever more close systematization, has not only been the tendency, but the great phenomenon of the modern industrial world. The same condition obtains to-day in the police profession.
The only connecting principle in our knowledge is its relation to our wants, and it is upon that we must found our systematization. The answer to this is, first, that there is no necessity for an universal synthesis; and secondly, that the same arguments may be used against the possibility of a complete subjective, as of a complete objective systematization.
A few further particulars may be emphasized from the comprehensive systematization which Hutcheson industriously and thoughtfully gave to Shaftesbury's ideas. Two points reveal the forerunner of Hume. First, the rôle assigned to the reason in moral affairs is merely subsidiary. Our motive to action is never the knowledge of a true proposition, but always simply a wish, affection, or impulse.
The inborn talent of the Florentines for the systematization of outward life is shown by their books on agriculture, business, and domestic economy, which are markedly superior to those of other European people in the fifteenth century. It has been rightly decided to publish selections of these works, although no little study will be needed to extract clear and definite results from them.
The psychology of the imaginer reduces itself to a progressively increasing interchange of rôles. Images become stronger and stronger states; perceptions, more and more feeble. In this movement opposite to nature I note four steps, each of which corresponds to particular conditions: The quantity of images; quantity and intensity; quantity, intensity and duration; complete systematization.
If, despite the changes that the religious doctrines underwent, despite the new interpretations given to old myths and legends, despite the profound changes introduced into the relationship of the gods to one another through the systematization of the pantheon, if, despite all this, the Babylonians and Assyrians leaders and people continued to feel that they were following the religion of their forefathers, it was due to the maintenance of the old sanctuaries.
"Unity" and "systematization" absolutely demanded that all other people should model themselves after M. Comte. It would never do to suppose that there could be more than one road to human happiness, or more than one ingredient in it. The most prejudiced must admit that this religion without theology is not chargeable with relaxation of moral restraints.
Other symbols and customs were introduced under the influence of the doctrines unfolded in the schools of thought in the various intellectual centers, and as an expression of the teachings of the priests. The cult of Babylonia, even more so than the literature, is a compound of these two factors, popular beliefs and the theological elaboration and systematization of these beliefs.
Besides, if we should add to this that a religion like Christianity offers to man that which it gives to him on the ground of historical facts, then the reports of these facts will certainly be subject to historical criticism just as surely as all historical reports; but if they are confirmed, the ideal and ethical convincing power which lies in this religion, unites for us with the whole weight of the convincing power of the historical and empirical facts, although the reproduction and systematization of its contents is still deficient and capable of further development.
By such trifling the real meaning of both these ideas is sacrificed and their bloom rubbed off. While depth is lacking in Wolff's thinking, he is remarkable for his power of systematization, his persevering diligence, and his logical earnestness, so that the praise bestowed on him by Kant, that he was the author of the spirit of thoroughness in Germany, was well deserved.
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