On the other hand, often it will be desirable or even necessary to actually answer certain of these generic or recurring questions about paths beforehand, say in order to provide a solid, sufficient, or heuristic framework for the subsequent or contemplated hodological inquiry.

The beginnings of such a practical questionary are found on the table "43 Questions To Ask When Treating A Path" (vide), the entries of which we will now discuss and illustrate.

First, WHERE DOES THE PATH START?

This is not a question that ought to ignorant of the start of one's path one somewhat ignorant of its nature, cause, illusions about what it is and is not. By being ignorant of a known path one may also be unaware of other paths that began, begin, or could have their start in the same place, at the same time, or for a similiar or related reason.

One may need to know where a path started in order to know how large or old it is, where it is going, whether it enjoys a necessary or merely an accidental existence, whether it can be reused, whether it is self-identical with or to be distinguished from certain other paths or parts or systems of paths, etc.

If the path is an ongoing sequence of saccades of the eye of a man presented with a scene, the history of those saccades may have meaning that depends in some way or degree upon the very first point in the scene at which the man's eye began to scan that scene, or possibly even upon the point at which the eye left or began the preceding scene, or upon the entire history of accidental or predisposed starts of the eye in the analysis of scenes earlier in the man's life. All of these ideas are just speculations, of course, but they might be worth looking into. If the start of the saccedal path is demonstrably irrelevant-, that, too, might be worth knowing.

When new comets stray into the 'inner' solar system an effort is made to learn at what distance from the Sun their path started, since this may bear upon the nature and comparative interest of the comet, the comet's anomalousness or normality, paths of past and future comets, properties of the hypothetical trans-Plutonian Oort Cloud, etc.

Secondly, WHERE DOES THE PATH END? It may not suffice to know where a path begins, one may also need to know where it finishes (if just to render the other kncwledge meaningfull or useful), it may be necessary to know where the path represented by a cave ends in order to know the size of the cave and thence whether the cave bespeaks the existence of a large-scale fault or fault system in the block of limestone in which the cave occurs or just a local, circumscribed fracture.

When an animal departs from its den on its daily trek, where does its path end? Do daily treks simply end at the den where they began, or is there something in between sufficiently regular, determinate, or special as to in effect be antipolar to the den and merit treatment as an 'end': a fixed radius or territorial boundary, perhaps, or distinctive eating, drinking, meeting, or salient (observatory) places? Perhaps the characteristic end of an animal's daily excursion is not spatial in character but rather some type of external event or a physiological limit.

It has been proposed that the Hawaiian island chain, or the Hawaiian Ridge, is the result of the relative or absolute movement of the Earth's crust over a hot spot or plume in the underlying mantle. A mechanism of this sort would probably recur over the surface of the Earth. Homologous paths should be sought to see whether they have in certain cases ended in an absolute or temporary sense, and if so, how they appear to have ended; for this would provide tests of the original proposal, as well as tests of rival variants of it.

The third question is, WHAT IS ALL OF THE PATH; [WHERE, WHAT, OR HOW LONG <ABSOLUTELY AND RELATIVELY>] IS IT?

This is a question I ask myself whenever I stumble upon an isolated ant during a walk in a wood. Upon the answer depends the probability that the little guy is lost (it would be interesting to know if ants get lost or not, and if they do get lost, then with what frequency and why), the respect I am willing to accord ants (because of their indicated intelligence, memory, tracking ability, or efficiency), the size of formicine territories (and their possible interpenetration) in a sylvan environment, variance of ant path lengths-and what things may contribute to this variance or specialize it in various environments, the determinability of the ant's basic direction-or of the whereabouts of its hive-from a segment of its path long enough to transcend small-scale noise (assuming the path is not indecipherably fractal), the relative importance of the local behavior or immediate motion of the ant (or absolute importance- if the nervous system of an ant automatically takes account of the spatial or temporal length of a given journey in the importance it assigns to, or the behavioral investment it makes in, a portion thereof), and much else besides.

The fourth question is, IS THE PATH FINISHED OR IS IT STILL [GROWING, CHANGING, EVOLVING, OR OTHERWISE ACTIVE] ?

This is something one would want to know about a parasitic worm lodged in human tissue. If the worm has completed its journey, treatment by drugs might suffice. But if its path is still growing, or liable to change direction, the risk might be greater and surgery might be required, say to protect a nearby critical organ.

The fifth question is, DID THE PATH HAVE TO DEVELOP AS IT DID, OR COULD IT INSTEAD HAVE DEVELOPED IN ANY OTHER WAY OR HAVE TAKEN ANY OTHER FORM?

One might want to ask this about meteors. Are the known types of paths of meteors comprehensive of the real-world possibilities, or might the great Tunguska meteorite that fell on Siberia in 1908 have been so anomalous in its cosmic path, structure, composition, and/or mass that its atmospheric path could have differed radically from any of the former?

Is the path of a meteor sufficiently unique that one might use it to diagnose the nature of the meteorite?

If the path by which a human being developed had been different would he have developed the same or a very different personality? To what extent is a psychogenetic path self-determining (or implicit in any segment of the path)? Can very different circumstances give rise to the same sort of fellow?