THE BE VELOPMENT OF PSYCHOL OGY, 421 



or^janic sciences that we know of had yet "been based on it, and its ap- 

 plication to mind was undreamed of. But with a confidence in the 

 intuitions of reason which is one of the clearest attributes of specula- 

 tive genius, and which may have its analogue in the statesman in the 

 nerve to take the vessel of the state over a bar, Mr. Spencer assumed 

 the provisional truth of the theory, and it might be difficult to exag- 

 gerate the extent to which his exhibition of it in Psychology has con- 

 tributed to its establishment. 



It was first requisite to find a generalization on which to base a 

 synthetic Psychology. The assumption being made that mind and 

 bodily life are but subdivisions of life in general, it was required to 

 seek out some characteristic common to both — some characteristic of 

 vital actions in general, and distinguishing them from non-vital ac- 

 tions. Applying a method which Prof. Stanley Jevons has omitted 

 to note in his " Character of the Experimentalist," Mr. Spencer ar- 

 rives at a definition of life of which the essential point is that it im- 

 plies a correspondence between life and its circumstances. Here is 

 the first notable advance— the inclusion of the environing world in 

 the definition of the science of mind ; and in this is contained the 

 germ of Mr. Spencer's later differentiation of Psychology and circum- 

 scription of its province.* If correspondence with the environment is 

 the differentia of life, it is almost an identical proposition to assert 

 that the degree of life will vary with the completeness of the corre- 

 spondence and the complexity of the environment. An ascending 

 Synthesis accordingly finds the correspondence at first direct and ho- 

 mogeneous, then direct but' heterogeneous, as extending in space and 

 in time, and as increasing in specialty, in generality, and in complex- 

 ity. Along with the all-sided development thus going on in the cor- 

 respondences, there goes on a development in the degree in which the 

 organs and functions of the individual are so correlated and united as 

 to respond promptly and effectually to the answering changes in the 

 environment. Contemplating now the corresj^ondences in their total- 

 ity, it is found that the generalization on which it was proposed to 

 base a synthetic Psychology is established, that manifestations of in- 

 telligence are found to consist in the establishment of correspondences 

 between relations in the organism and relations in the environment, 

 and the preliminary assumption that life and mind are fundamentally 

 identical is proved. 



]!^evertheless, though these two kinds of life are primordially the 

 same, they are in their general aspects widely unlike, and we must in- 

 quire whence the differences arise. Instinct, Memory, Reason, Feel- 

 ing, and Will, have specific differences ; a science of Psychology which 

 is based on the theory of development must determine whence these 



V " Psychology," second edition ( 1870), volume i., section 53. Swedenborg's 

 " Law of Correspondences " is not without analogy to ilr. Spencer's origmal general- 

 ization. 



