A scientific survey is not necessarily a collection of all possible information about any people or country; that is an encyclopaedia; a scientific survey is a survey of those facts only which throw light on the business in hand.

A scientific survey of foreign missions ought not then necessarily to look at the work carried on from "every point of view".

The point of view must be defined, the end to be served defined, and then only those factors which throw light upon that end have any place in a scientific survey.

We cannot be too clear about this, because in survey of a work so vast and so many sided as foreign missions we might easily include every human activity, unless we defined beforehand the end to be served and selected carefully only the appropriate factors.

Carefully defined, missionary survey is not the unwieldy, amorphous thing which people often imagine.