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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in the preeenl oonnection ero we pass on. In the first place, it is 

 well thai we should remind ourselves how enormously this book 

 was in advance of the whole thought of the time not the com- 

 mon thoughl only, but the cultivated thought as well. It was in 

 : fullest sense of the term an epoch-making book epoch-mak- 

 ing because it placed the study of mind, theretofore in the hands 

 of the metaphysicians as sterile a subject as it had proved in the 

 days of medifflval scholasticism, upon an entirely new and prom- 

 ly fertile basis. Hitherto, mental philosophy had concerned 

 itself only with the facts of adult human consciousness. Spencer, 

 realizing as we are now all able to realize, how little could ever 

 be accomplished by this time-worn and superficial method, broke 

 away from all the traditions of the schools, and started out on 

 an original investigation of the phenomena of mind, in the wide 

 sweep of which ho took in not only the mental growth of children 

 and savages, but also the phenomena of intelligence as displayed 

 by the whole range of the animate world down to the lowest 

 creatures. To quote his own words, "Life in its multitudinous 

 and infinitely varied embodiments has arisen out of the lowest 

 and simplest beginnings by steps as gradual as those which 

 evolved an homogeneous germ into a complete organism." Start- 

 ing from this conception, the author proceeds to treat of the 

 whole subject of intelligence and its forms of manifestation from 

 an evolutionary point of view; the Principles having "for their 

 object the establishment by a double process of analysis and of 

 synthesis, the unity of composition of the phenomena of mind, 

 and the continuity of their development." * My second remark 

 Ls pa rely a personal one, yet one which has its interest and im- 

 portance though these are of a somewhat melancholy character 

 in any account of Mr. Spencer's earlier writings. It was in con- 

 sequence of overwork while producing the volume now referred 

 to, that Mr. Spencer suffered a nervous breakdown which com- 

 pletely incapacitated him for a period of eighteen months, and 

 which, even after his general recovery, left him stranded in that 

 condition of partial and varying invalidism in which he has con- 

 tinued fr,, m that day to this, and under the burden of which all 

 subsequent great work has been done. 



It is not, I think, needful to pause, after even such a rapid 

 summary of the activities of these ten momentous years, to say 

 any thin- about the extraordinary perversion of judgment which 

 I critics from whom, having regard to their positions and 

 I culture, something better was to have been expected, to 

 treat these writings as "stock-writings," and to refer to their 

 author as having "the weakness of omniscience" and a desire to 



Th. Ribot, English Psychology, p. 148. London, 1873. 



