Suppose you wanted to invent a system of shorthand, and wanted to make it as perfect as possible. How would you go about it?
Your first step should be to restate your question most advantageously. You want to create certain characters or symbols, which will (1) take the shortest time to write, (2) will be easily recognized by yourself or others, even if written carelessly, and (3) which will not be so numerous or so complex as to be difficult to learn. You may decide that such symbols would have even further requirements. Next you should decide on the methods to use in attacking your problem—this in order not to forget any. Now assume you have decided on these methods and that the first is the a priori. Your conclusion might be that it would be impossible to have a different symbol for every word, and that it is necessary to have some sort of alphabet. Should this alphabet be based on that used in longhand? That is, should merely a simpler symbol stand in place of each letter? Or should a different symbol represent each sound? Or would it be possible to have a different elementary symbol for each syllable? Having decided the basis for your symbols or characters, you will know at least approximately the number required. Your problem will then become that of making the characters as simple as possible, so that they may be written most quickly; and yet as different from each other as possible so that if written carelessly (as they will be when written swiftly), they may be easily recognized. You might try writing down all the simplest symbols you can think of. Or you might ask yourself whether there is any fundamental geometrical figure from which you can derive your symbols. Or you might study the simplest and easiest movements of the hand, and base your characters on these.
This a priori method is most apt of all to provoke real thinking. It should therefore be taken up before any of the others. Not only is it best for making you think deeply, but it will be more likely than any of the others to make you think originally. However, whether attended by great or little success, this method should be followed by others.
Not the least fruitful of these would be the evolutionary. This, of course, would consist in studying the history of shorthand, finding out the direction in which it has been tending, and thus anticipating in some degree its future development. As this method is comparative we would naturally be led from it to comparing the shorthand systems of to-day, and assaying the good and bad qualities of each. These could only be assayed if we knew something of shorthand theory, and thus our experience with the deductive or a priori method would be of service.
Implied in here is a method of different nature than any we have yet discussed, but one of immense help. In turning from the deductive method to a study of shorthand systems which others have developed, you have an opportunity to compare the results of your own thinking with those obtained by others. If you have failed to solve the question in as good a manner as these others, you can ask yourself wherein and why your own reflections and ingenuity fell short. If you follow this method with all problems—i.e., thinking a thing out for yourself before looking up what others have thought—you will soon improve your thinking surprisingly. The method is capable of application in every problem, from inventing an adding machine to trying to find how the plumber got that $3.46 on the bill.
But to return to shorthand. We still have the empirical and experimental methods. In this particular case the difference between them would be simply one of degree. We could find, for instance, what systems were used by the fastest shorthand writers; but we could get nothing conclusive from this, for we would have to make allowance for the natural ability and length of training of these writers. From merely looking at two outlines or characters, it is often difficult to tell which can be written faster. This could only be tested by writing hundreds in a row and finding the time it took to write the same number of each. Of course such experiment is capable of indefinite expansion.
In dealing with method heretofore, I have at times come dangerously near to making a false assumption. I have been talking as if a man who took up political science, shorthand, or any other subject, were dealing with only one problem. As a matter of fact he is dealing with a whole series of problems. Just how many it is difficult to say, because no problem worthy of the name is an indivisible unit, and may always be broken into smaller problems. The whole science of æsthetics is included in the simple question “What is beauty?”, the science of ethics is merely the answer to “What is right conduct?”, and metaphysics may be reduced to the problem “What is reality?” But when we come to deal with any of these we instinctively break them up into smaller and more concrete problems, making the treatment easier, just as a general attempts to split his enemy’s forces, so that he can annihilate one section at a time. Often, indeed, the very division of the larger problem into smaller problems constitutes its solution, for we finally come to a problem which practically answers itself, and which we recognize as being included in, or a particular form of, some more general problem to which we already know the answer.
A man sets before himself the question, “What is the proper sphere of Government?” Perhaps he will first of all consider certain different specific activities which might possibly be supposed to come within the sphere of governmental interference. He might ask himself, for instance, “Should the Government interfere with freedom of contract?” Notice that he has here temporarily made his problem narrower, he has chosen to break it up in order to deal with it part by part. But even when he came to cope with this smaller problem he would probably find it necessary to break this up, and he would therefore take a specific example. Suppose a man works for so much an hour, and that nine hours’ work a day gives him the minimum amount on which he can live and support his family. Would it be wise to limit the legal working day of such a man to eight hours? This problem practically answers itself, and so further division is unnecessary. Of course the answer to this does not determine the answer to the original question, for other parts still remain to be considered.
In fact, much of the success of our thinking will depend upon just how we divide our big problems into subsidiary problems, and just what our subsidiary or subordinate problems are. This will depend to some extent on our own natural sagacity, and to some extent on mere chance. No rigid rules can be laid down. The only advice which can be offered is that when a thinker breaks up a problem he should do so with an eye to utility and definiteness.
John Stuart Mill, in an essay on Jeremy Bentham, pointed out that the secret of the latter’s strength and originality of thought lay in his method, which “may be shortly described as the method of detail; of treating wholes by separating them into their parts, abstractions by resolving them into things,—classes and generalities by distinguishing them into the individuals of which they are made up; and breaking every question into pieces before attempting to solve it.” The method was not absolutely original with Bentham, but “whatever originality there was in the method, in the subjects he applied it to, and in the rigidity with which he adhered to it, there was the greatest.”