BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



experience and endowment in these naive terms, not yet 

 realizing that memory must have an organic counterpart, 

 and that reason is but a name for a reaction toward per- 

 ceived relations. Of like import was the "associationism" 

 that flourished in Great Britain, which explained, far 

 too abstractly, how the world of ideas was composed and 

 directed — forgetting how closely it was modeled on the 

 world of things as organized in words. 



"Faculty" psychology had a strange sequel when Gall 

 (1758-1828), a distinguished anatomist, was led to con- 

 clude that he could judge from the shape of the head what 

 "faculties" the owner possessed in marked degree. By 

 this completely fallacious method he discovered an impres- 

 sive array of "faculties," from philoprogenitiveness to 

 tune and number, and located each on the cranial surface. 

 The unscientific phrenology which he founded had a 

 flourishing career, but disappeared when the true nature of 

 cortical functions was established. 



All this is a mere sample of scattered observations — an 

 eclectic array of the piecemeal, mosaic fragments of psy- 

 chological knowledge filtering through a variety of philo- 

 sophical and scientific pursuits, unassembled, unrelated, 

 and unorganized. The relationing of it all into one scheme 

 of mental life, with an origin and a growth and a mutual 

 illumination — all so obvious to our insight — did not 

 enter upon the horizon of these forerunners of psychology. 

 For this the general intellectual advancement was as yet 

 insufficient, the interpretation of nature lacking in profit- 

 able clues. 



The establishment of the theory of organic evolution in 

 the middle of the nineteenth century completely recon- 

 structed the biological sciences; it gave a new key to the 

 varieties of life, placed structure and function in a new 

 light, and projected a genetic version of organic processes, 

 as applicable to the highest as to the lowest organisms. 



[60] 



