THE TEACHING OF PSYCHOLOGY. 343 



moral and social order. The fear is exaggerated and chimerical ; 

 but that is not the point to he considered. A fact is always a fact, 

 whatever may he the consequences. The question is, whether it 

 is true : the student should recognize no other. Many of tlie facts 

 encountered in our studies are obscure and hard to explain, but 

 that does not prevent their being facts ; or at least the chief ques- 

 tion should be, to learn whether they are facts. Besides, contra- 

 dictory facts are the ferment of science. I once asked a distin- 

 guished man of science how a certain discovery he had made was 

 getting on. "It is not getting on," he replied. "What is the 

 matter with it ? " I anxiously asked. " Why," he said, " I find no 

 facts except those which are favorable to it ; and," he added, " it 

 takes contradictory facts to teach us." This is true. The theory 

 will either explain the contradictory facts and be fortified by 

 them^ as the Newtonian theory has been by all the exceptions that 

 have been opposed to it and which have entered into it ; or it will 

 be replaced by a wider and more comprehensive theory. In both 

 cases there is a gain for science, which would not have been ob- 

 tained if we had hesitated, on account of vain scruples, to seek out 

 and verify the facts in question. In principle, every science 

 should be independent of those which come after it. Chemistry, 

 for example, whether organic or physiological, in studying the 

 chemical conditions of life, is held to one thing only — to seek out 

 and discover those chemical conditions — and has no other func- 

 tion. It is not for it to occiipy itself with the interests of vital 

 force nor with anything that concerns the vital. Its right and 

 duty are to push as far forward as possible the chemical explana- 

 tion, for who else is to do it ? Then comes the pliysiologist. His 

 business is to bring into the light the new element which has been 

 added to the former. Chemistry could have been jDreoccupied 

 with this only to its detriment. If chemistry had been concerned 

 to take care of the existence of the vital principle, it would not 

 have achieved the splendid discovery of organic synthesis which 

 has made the name of M. Berthelot illustrious. Does this signify 

 that life is not a chemical fact ? Not at all. But it belongs to 

 physiology, and not to chemistry, to exhibit the peculiar quality 

 that distinguishes the one science from the other. 



Applying these principles to psycho-physiology, all the clouds 

 that obscure the question are dispelled. The function of psycho- 

 physiology is not to establish the existence of the soul ; that 

 belongs to pure psychology and metaphysics. How can we expect 

 to find the soul, personality, freedom, in the study of the organs ? 

 The interests of the soul woiild therefore be very badly placed in 

 the hands of psycho-physiology. They are better confided to other 

 hands ; and in touching upon these higher questions, that branch 

 would be doing an injury to the cause which it assumed to serve. 



