F. Matthias Alexander has described his work for the benefit of the inquiring public through the medium of four books,(1) and the second of these books in the order of their publication conveys in its title, The Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, the nature of his work. The work of Alexander is original and is nowhere an offshoot of any predecessor in time or in space, and for this reason it cannot call for its recommendation upon any authority to sanction its validity, but must come asking to be accepted upon the greater testing of proving its worth on its own showing. Those who produce original methods or techniques are expected to answer the demand for their operational verification, and that demand is embraced within the call for scientific evidence. I propose to state the scientific evidence for the case of the work of F. Matthias Alexander.

So that the editors and those who may read my contribution may be in no doubt, I desire to preface my later lines with a definition of science, and, to render the definition readily confirmable, I am taking it from the popular and easily available Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary. The definition of "science," on page 853, reads as follows:

"Science. Pursuit of knowledge or truth for its own sake."

The definition of truth," on page 1042, reads as follows:

"Truth. Agreement with reality."

I hope that it may be agreed that scientific evidence is not a statement of facts, but a statement of method or procedure in detail which when used or followed by anyone, will give rise to means for making further observations, and where every issue of the method is used in turn to test the validity of the method.
When a method is used which leads to issues which are not means to make further observations, then pursuit is stopped and the method is no longer to be regarded as scientific. I shall ask that this definition of scientific evidence shall be agreed to guide me in my writing and the reader in his reading. John Dewey, in Experience and Nature, Open Court Publishing Co., 1926, page 3, wrote, "science is after all an art, a matter of perfected skill in conducting inquiry . . .", not "something finished, absolute in itself," but the result of a certain technique . . ." Again, in the introduction to Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, Methuen, he wrote, "The essence of scientific method does not consist in taking, consequences in gross; it consists precisely in the means by which consequences are followed up in detail. It consists in the processes by which the causes that are used to explain the consequences or effects, can be concretely followed up to show that they actually produce these consequences and no others." These words of Dewey may help to throw the high light of his inquiring intelligence upon the definition of scientific evidence which I am using as my guide and which is to serve the reader as his guide.

To enable any interested, inquirer, to understand Alexander's discoveries, the inquirer is asked to agree, that he will follow in detail, and in practice the observations that Alexander made so that he was enabled to pursue his quest for knowledge. Alexander's work is ,as I present the case, asking to be tried upon the sanction of "operational verification," and the jurors are asked to act under the instruction strictly of the method which Alexander employed, and to depart from the method only upon pain of finding their judgment in default.

Alexander's observations were, from the beginning, observations, upon the use of the self. The observations were objective in that he used a mirror to observe how he used himself. The word "use" is an everyday word, and it is used here in the everyday sense of putting to its purpose what is used, or directing, or guiding
Alexander's first observations of his use as seen in the mirror led him to discover that he was doing with his head, his neck, in short, with himself, that which he did not know and had not known he was doing with himself. What he saw himself do with himself in the mirror was not what he had felt he was doing when he did not observe himself in the mirror. The objective observation of himself in the mirror caused him to discover that in the ordinary way the sensory impressions of his use of himself brought to his awareness through his kinæsthetic sensations were not in agreement with reality. His means of knowing what he was doing with himself without the aid of a mirror were not truthful, and could not be scientific. This first observation, that he was doing with himself what he did not know he was doing with himself, led him to make further observations upon himself, and later upon other people, whereby he confirmed in them what he had found in himself. He made the observation that his use of himself was instinctive or habitual, and he noted that, in the severe operational test of living, reliance for the avoidance of the pitfalls of ill-health and incompetent performance could not be placed upon instinctive use. His further observations led him to reject instinctive use of himself as unreliable, and led him to make observations how he might use or guide himself upon a reliable basis. His observations led him to the observation that he could not in a direct or positive way use himself to make his feelings about his use and the reality of his objectively observed use agree, but only that he could prevent uses which, from their by-products, he recognised as harmful to himself. When he succeeded in preventing or not carrying out manners of use which were associated with harmful effects upon himself, he found that he could thus indirectly bring about a manner of use which was new ­ previously unknown ­ and which his kinæsthesia registered for him as wrong.

He continued to project this previously unknown manner of use consciously through the medium of the mirror, and found that by this means he could re-educate his kinæsthesia so that his sense impressions and the reality of his manner of use agreed. Conscious guidance involved the use of operational verification in that directions of use related to four-dimensional space-time and not to subjective criteria. Thus far Alexander's observations had led him to the discovery that his sensory appreciation of his manner of use of himself was, under instinctive guidance, not in agreement with reality, was not truthful, could not be scientific. But the manner of use which was brought into being by preventing manifest misuse, he discovered, was capable of re-educating his sensory appreciation so that it, the agency of untruth, could be changed and made a servant of truth. This manner of use was a new reality, which, Alexander observed, gave rise to a continuing rising standard of reliable sensory appreciation, and had for its index a relation of the head to the neck which, in terms of relativity to the directions taken by the other parts of the whole self, he could describe as "forward-and-up." Substantiation of its claim as a reality came in the observation that so long as a manner of use of the self was projected which had for its index the relative use of the head tending "forward-and-up," then so long was manifest misuse of the self prevented. Thus far Alexander had assembled these observations ­ that sensory appreciation in the instinctively guided was untruthful or unreliable, that prevention of misuse was the means whereby a manner of use could be brought into being which was itself a prevention of misuse, that this manner of use had for its index the observable trend of the head in use in the relative direction "forward-and-up," that the manner of use in which the head trended "forward-and-up" was associated with a rising standard of reliability in sensory appreciation, and these observations could be used to give rise to means whereby to give rise to three new realities ­ dependable prevention, dependable sensory appreciation, and dependable means for making further observations.

The inquirer, who reads this is not asked to believe, but step by step, to follow Alexander's method of making observations and to believe only wherein his observations agree with those of Alexander. While he is making his first observations he is expected to remember that any method involving observation entails constant observation. over lengthy periods, often involving many years, and that experience in observation must be won at first hand and cannot be acquired at second hand. On the other hand, experience of the means whereby observations may be made, is communicable by a teacher who has himself or herself learned to apply these means and this is the work of Alexander in the sphere of his experience. These means he his set down in his four books.(1) In his insistence upon following his means to learn Alexander's work lies the paradox which centres in the accusations that have been levelled at Alexander and his supporters that they are unscientific. His accusers describe what they allege he asks them to do, and deplore that he produces no scientific facts. But he is not concerned with teaching what to do, nor is he concerned with producing facts, scientific or otherwise, but with teaching methods or manners, begun first in the manner of the use of the self, whereby observations may be made. If science is the pursuit of knowledge or truth for its own sake, then the primary task of the scientist is to make observations and the first task of the observer is to prove that his own means of making observations are reliable, and it is to this service Alexander has applied himself. When this most obvious but readily disdained observation is made, then an inquirer has no difficulty in applying, himself to the task of understanding Alexander's work, but to be asked to self-question the reliability of our means of making observations about our self and its use appears to be the most sensitive and reactionary part of our amour-propre, and the disinclination to set out upon the task of self inquiry overrules the desire for the pursuit of knowledge upon such a condition in all but a very few.

Alexander's work proves that the faculty of knowing which brings knowledge is not a transcendent absolute, but a biological product of biological experience. No more is reality an absolute, but new reality is continually evolving, and it is when knowledge agrees to accord with the new reality that truth may be said to exist. The attempt to know new biological experience by means that brought knowledge in familiar biological experience fails to succeed and ends in irritation, exasperation, and self-defeatism. It is to be the means to prevent such sequels that I advise those, who with the desire to understand Alexander and his work and who by virtue of their responsibility to society are called upon to judge it, to apply themselves to a detailed and carefully controlled pursuit of his methods. If they in all honesty do so, their verdict is bound to be unanimous that the uniqueness of Alexander's work is that it is the essence of scientific method.

(1) Man's Supreme Inheritance, Chaterson Ltd., London.
Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, Chaterson Ltd., London.
The Use of the Self, Chaterson Ltd., London.
The Universal Constant in Living, Chaterson Ltd., London.