to know. Moral preoccupations have done harm to psychology more frequently than we think, by preventing it being seen as it is.

VIII.

Psychology, as understood in its widest sense, embracing all the phenomena of mind in all animals, and considering them, not only under their adult form, but in the successive phases of their development, offers an almost boundless field for research. Hence it is striking to observe how summary all the hitherto most accredited treatises upon Psychology are. If we subtract historical digressions, what, in many instances, remains? We shall be still more impressed by this brevity if we compare psychological books with those of naturalists, which are laden. with details. Whence arises this difference, if not from the method employed? The latter collect facts with indefatigable patience, noting exceptions and differences, the former consisting only of a vague sketch, and some abstract formulas. And yet, has not that principle which thinks, feels, acts, and wills, in animated beings, almost infinite varieties, which are to be revealed only by the most minute investigation? Can we believe that a human soul may be described more briefly than a plant?

As the inevitable result of progress in every science is to produce division and subdivision of labour in it, we may safely predict that an extended and truly complete psychology will sever itself into many branches, and form sub-sciences, which shall become the objects of special study. It would be rash to indicate those divisions beforehand, but perhaps we may foresee some of them. Mr. John Stuart Mill, in the weighty pages which he has devoted to method in psychology, after having pointed out that the object of this science is 'the uniformities of successions,' bids us remark that we can conceive an intermediate case between the perfect science and its extreme imperfection. Such is the theory of the tides; when we consider the general causes of this phenomenon only, it can be predicted with certainty, but local or accidental circumstances (such as the configuration of the coasts or the direction of the wind) modify it, so

as to render the result of the general calculation inexact. 'The science of the tides is not yet an exact science, not because of a radical impossibility relating to nature, but because it is very difficult to establish desired uniformities with precision. The science of human nature is of the same kind.'

Mr. Stuart Mill divides psychological studies into two great classes of the one part, those which are experimental, of the other part, those which are deductive.

:

Experimental psychology, founded upon observation, establishes the facts from which it draws its laws, and 'constitutes the universal or abstract part of the philosophy of human nature.'

Deductive psychology, which constitutes ethology, or the science of character, supposes the preceding. It examines into how the general laws of psychological facts produce such variety of national or individual character, by their meetings, their combinations, their crossings.

If, following these indications, we endeavour to trace the divisions of a truly scientific psychology, this is what we shall find it ought to contain.

Firstly, we may comprehend in the term General Psychology the study of the phenomena of consciousness, sensations, thoughts, emotions, relations, etc., considered under their most general aspects. This study, which ought to serve as a point of departure and a basis for all the others, is the only one which has hitherto been cultivated by the psychologists. It is, besides, clear that general psychology ought to profit by all the discoveries due to its subordinate parts. It would complete itself, firstly by Comparative Psychology, whose object and importance we have already endeavoured to show, and afterwards by a study of anomalies or monstrosities, which might be called Psychological Teratology. It is unnecessary to delay here in order to demonstrate the usefulness of the study of deviations towards the complete understanding of phenomena, but the indifference of psychology on this point is truly remarkable. With the exception of Diderot's Lettre sur les Aveugles, which does not fulfil its promises, the pages of Dugald Stewart upon James Mitchell (Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. iii.), and

some scattered observations, psychology has completely shut its eyes to exceptions and anomalies.1

It is the physiologists who have drawn the conclusions to ⚫ which it led from the curious history of Laura Bridgeman, conclusions totally contrary to the doctrine of transformed sensations, and which, founded upon the facts, had not the vague character of the ordinary arguments. A deaf man, a blind man, a man originally deprived of any sense, is he not a ready-made subject for observation, one to whom one of the strictest processes of method, the differential, may be applied? Have studies upon madness, though still very incomplete, been altogether sterile hitherto ?

If we now pass from abstract to concrete psychology, if, quitting analysis for synthesis, we deal no longer with general but with derived laws; if we try to determine how these laws by crossing each other determine psychological varieties, we shall meet with a new science, that of character, or, as Mr. Mill calls it, Ethology. We can understand how ordinary psychology, which has little taste for facts, and an habitual tendency towards abstraction, has neglected this study. Phrenology and Cranioscopics, which have been suffered to sleep, understood its importance better. The science of characters constituted a practical or applied psychology, whose utility in education, in the con

1 The philosopher of whom we have already spoken in reference to the faculties, proposes to classify as follows all studies whose object is man, which he designates under the name of Anthropology :

I. Researches relative to man as an individual.

I. Relative to Organism: Physiology and Anatomy.

2. Relative to mental operations and affections: Psychology.

3. Relative to the connexion between the phenomena of organism with the phenomena of consciousness (comprising Cranioscopics and Physiognomy).

4. Relative to the individual character.

II. Researches relative to humanity: its origin, races, progress, and civilisation.

III. Researches relative to the connexion between humanity and superior beings, or theology.

SAMUEL BAILEY, Letters on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. ii. Letter 20.

duct of life, and even in politics, is evident. No doubt this science will always partake considerably of the nature of art; but will it not be sufficiently exact to render its employment legitimate ? The naturalists have discovered certain organic correlations, on which they rely for the reconstruction of an animal from a few fragments. They know that there is a relation between the foot and the jaw, that the tooth of a carnivorous animal indicates a bony structure, consequently a skeleton, a cerebro-spinal axis, etc., etc. Might not psychological conditions be equally arrived at? Let us suppose that by an accumulation of sure and varied experiments, we were enabled to establish for instance, that a certain manner of feeling supposes a certain variety of imagination, which, in its turn, supposes a certain mode of judging and reasoning, which again supposes a certain method of willing and acting, and that this determination should be as precise as possible; surely by the aid of a single fact it might be possible to reconstitute a character, since the problem would reduce itself to the following: Given a number of the series, to find the entire series.

It will be granted that this hypothesis is in no way chimerical, if we will only remark that penetrating minds effect such a reconstruction instinctively, by a swift and sure intuition, though there is nothing scientific in it; that there exists a particular art which is called the knowledge of men. The question is, whether this Art may not become a Science; that is to say, whether, instead of being arbitrary, it may not be formulated into laws applicable to a great number of cases, and verified in the great majority. When this shall have been successfully done, Ethology will be constituted.

It seems that Ethology might be divided into an ethology of of individuals, an ethology of peoples, and an ethology of races.

Individual ethology, the most important and the most concrete of the three, would seek after the psychological differences resulting from difference of sex and temperament. It would determine the psychological characters which distinguish those various forms of mind which we designate under the names of poet, geometrician, industrial, warrior, etc. etc., thus limiting its study to that of a certain number of types. Among psychologists

I know only Dugald Stewart who has attempted this task (Appendix to his Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. iii.), in incomplete and vague essays, whose diffuseness is not their least defect.

The ethology of peoples and races would derive its materials from linguistics and history. It is easy to see that ethology is not in any way confounded with history. There is as much difference between defining the character of a people and relating its history, as there is between drawing a man's likeness and writing his biography. The history of a people and the biography of a man are not only composed of that which comes from them, but also of the action of exterior circumstances upon them. Ethology eliminates this latter element, and takes no account of it, except in so far as it serves to elucidate the character. Ethology would not propose to itself simply a statical study of characters, it would endeavour to determine the phases which they undergo, and to follow them throughout their evolution.

Such, keeping in view phenomena only, and without speaking of the metaphysics of psychology, is the framework of one division of that science. But so long as it shall not be subdivided, it will be impossible for it to embrace the whole of its domain; it will not get beyond the brevity and meagreness of the ordinary treatises.1 And yet, when we consider the immense variety of facts and questions contained in it, the task seems inexhaustible; infinite perspectives spread themselves before the seeker, and we find that there is so much to do that we venture to say nothing has been done.

It seems to me that the best we can hope for psychology is that it may be entering upon that period of apparent disorder and real fecundity, in which every question is studied separately, and excavated to its utmost depths. A good collection of monographs and memoirs upon special points would be perhaps the best service which could now be rendered to psychological

1 The only work, within our knowledge, in France, in which the insufficiency of ordinary psychology and its neglect of many important questions are treated, is in Vacherot's Essais de Philosophie Critique, p. 152 et seq.