94 THE FACTORS OF THE MIND

importance : in my view, we should think of factor-analysis
as a logical method rather than as a mathematical method.

Once this standpoint is adopted, many of the objections
that philosophers have so often urged against attempts to
apply arithmetical procedures to the mind fall immediately
to the ground ; for it now appears that the numbers and
other quantitative devices which the psychometrist has
introduced are in the first instance merely symbolic expedi-
ents, employed to help him to state his arguments in a more
precise and rigorous form.