_The basis for the organization of knowledge in general._

All the facts in Mr. Fiske's book are organized about the stirring
question expressed in his title, _i. e._, how our ship of state barely
escaped being wrecked. Because this idea is of intense interest to us,
and the entire book bears upon it continually, the story is read with
bated breath. Drummond's _Greatest Thing in the World_ is another
excellent example on a smaller scale of ideas centered about a vital
human question. Thus specific problems of various degrees of breadth,
_that are intimately related to man_, can well be taken as the basis
for the organization of knowledge in general. Classical literature is
organized on this basis, which is called the pedagogical or
_psychological_ basis, and it seems desirable that other fields should
also be.

Yet there are other kinds of organization in which the relation to man
is not so plainly, or not at all, taken as the controlling idea. For
example, biology is often organized on the basis of the growing
complexity of the organism, the student beginning with the simple,
microscopic cell, and advancing to the more and more complex forms.
Formerly, after the Linnaean system, plants were classified according
to their similarity of structure. Now both plants and animals are
often classified on the basis of their manner of adaptation to their
environment. Thus within the field of science there is what is called
the _scientific_ basis of organization.

There is also the _logical_ basis of organization of thought,
according to which some most fundamental idea is taken as the
beginning of a system, or the premise, and other ideas are evolved
from this first principle. Rousseau attempted to develop his