THE DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY. 419 



metaphysics, logic, and ethics, named Aristotelianism, yields under 

 pressure some small psychology. Besides being, therefore, in what- 

 ever rudimentary forms, a pet academical study, much encouraged by 

 philosophically-minded Heads, the science itself is vastly further ad- 

 vanced than any of the mental sciences, its province is tolerably well 

 defined, in the statement, at least, of its main problems the most op- 

 posite schools agree, and both likewise agree in the tests to be ap- 

 plied to their solutions. A pretender to psychological discoveries has 

 accordingly a decided advantage over his brother discoverer in the 

 more embyronic mental sciences in so far that, if he is not out of sight 

 ahead of his generation, he can secure a competently-instructed audi- 

 ence, eager and, on the whole, capable to decide on his pretensions. 

 The extreme fascination of Mr. Spencer's theories, and doubtless their 

 fundamental truth, have obtained for him a large clientUe ^ and the 

 position of the philosophy of mind as the foundation of all other phi- 

 losophies, social, ethical, testhetic, and political, has created channels 

 through which his characteristic ideas have percolated in all direc- 

 tions. Such a supremacy as this could only have been gained, if our 

 history of the parallel development of the physical and mental sciences 

 be exact, by a substantial identity of the method and unity of the 

 principles of the synthetic psychology with those of the last-developed 

 organic and inorganic sciences. We shall see that this is the case. 



Mr. Spencer's numerous psychological advances may be grouped 

 in two divisions ; the application to mind of the theory of develop- 

 ment, and the connection of psychological evolution with evolution in 

 general. The last edition of his work also incorporates Mr. Darwin's 

 law of natural selection in the explanation of the emotions, but this 

 may be regarded as simply an extension of the development theory. 

 In the working out of both principles, Mr. Spencer has followed the 

 lead of the physical sciences. 



Before it could be discovered that species were evolved from one 

 another, it had to be discovered that there were among them funda- 

 mental kinships. The foundation of the comparative sciences was the 

 beginning of the movement, and we suppose that Goethe's " Sketch 

 of a Universal Introduction into Comparative Anatomy " may be re- 

 garded as striking the first note. Thirty years' further research re- 

 duced the skull of all vertebrate animals to a uniform structure, and 

 determined the laws of its variation. In 1820 Audouin partially suc- 

 ceeded in filling up the chasm between insects and other animals. In 

 1830 Laurencet and Meyraux assimilated the structure of mollusks to 

 that of vertebrates. Out of these discoveries an internecine war 

 arose between the schools of Cuvier and Geofiroy St.-Hilaire, the 

 former contending that the structure and functions of animals should 

 be studied in the light of final causes, the latter setting up their analo- 

 gies as the only safe guide. And out of the struggle came the new 

 philosophy. " The priyiciple of connection^'' says Whewell, "^Ae elec- 



