THE DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY. 415 



is not only far greater than has been before made in any ])eriod of 

 equal length, but greater than has been made since the foundation of 

 the science. The large acquisitions of new facts, the faithful descrip- 

 tion of phenomena, the reduction of them to law, and the investigation 

 of the physical " sides " of mental products, which we owe to Prof. 

 Bain, and the application to mind of the revolutionary principle of 

 development, and the inclusion of it within the larger philosophy of 

 evolution, which we owe to Mr. Herbert Spencer, have changed not 

 only the aspect but the constitution of Psychology. Like all the pre- 

 vious advances we have recorded, the developments due to both of 

 these distinguished psychologists have had their dynamic in the sub- 

 sidiary sciences. 



Mr. Bain describes his work as being "the first attempt to con- 

 struct a Natural History of the Feelings, upon the basis of a uniform 

 descriptive method," and the characterization is just. All preceding- 

 surveys of the mind had been undertaken to establish a doctrine, as 

 by Hobbes ; to refute a theory, as by Locke ; to prove an hypothesis, 

 as by Hartley j or to furnish analytical justification of a foregone con- 

 clusion, as by the elder Mill. Mechanics, Natural Philosophy, and 

 Chemistry, having exhausted their constructive impulses on Psycholo- 

 gy, it was reserved for Mr. Bain to adopt a method which makes no 

 presuppositions, rests on no hypothesis, and conducts to no necessary 

 conclusions — the method employed in the organic sciences in their un- 

 developed state. The natural history '' method " is very old. The 

 first full-blown specimen of a naturalist, whose reputation has reached 

 posterity, appears to have been Solomon, and of him it is said that 

 " he spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto 

 the hyssop that springeth out of the wall : he spake also of beasts, and 

 of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes." ^ Linnaeus was even 

 more comprehensive, and added minerals to plants and animals ; but 

 with him the differentiation of science and accompanying specializa- 

 tion of method begin. The first great classifier himself constituted 

 Botany a separate science ; Haiiy followed with Mineralogy ; the dis- 

 covery of Oken (or Goethe) and the theories of St. Hilaire founded 

 Comparative Anatomy ; Comparative Physiology issued out of its 

 sister science ; and morphological and functional divisions of all these 

 sciences were successively established. With such advances in clas- 

 sification, the natural history method becomes immensely more com- 

 plex, but its character is fundamentally the same — that of description. 

 We cannot better exemplify this than by quoting the words of Dr. 

 Carpenter. Contrasting him with the " enterprising discoverer," the 

 horticulturist, and the breeder, he says that — 



" The philosophic naturalist. . . . aims to reduce the number of species, by 

 investigating the degree of variation which each is liable to undergo, the forms 

 it assumes at different periods of its existence, the permanent characters by 



1 " First Book of the Kings," iv. 33. 



