616 PSYCHOLOGY 



In France, something in some degree analogous appears in the 

 writings of Condillac and his associates before the voluntaristic 

 reaction of Maine de Biran and Jouffroy. The postulate of sensa- 

 tion was indeed a naturalism, as has been said above; but it was 

 not motived in strict philosophical neutrality, nor did it issue in a 

 general formula. At the same time it served to establish the Lockian 

 tradition on the Continent, and to furnish a shibboleth which, though 

 destructive enough from other points of view, nevertheless helped 

 to clear the way to a saner empiricism. It should be noted, too, that 

 there were in Germany sporadic intimations, and more, toward a 

 fruitful naturalism; but that these remained without great influence 

 notably the remarkable work of Beneke and had to be refor- 

 mulated in later times, shows that, as matter of fact, the naturalistic 

 movement did not receive any indispensable support from Germany. 1 

 Beneke's advanced positions, it is fair to add, are only now becoming 

 generally known as anticipations of certain important genetic 

 principles. 



The outcome of this great British movement is an established 

 empirical tradition. The gain is seen, on one side, in the soil tilled 

 for the sowing of evolution seed; it appears again in the established 

 spirit of patient research which is the life-blood of science. In 

 Alexander Bain we have the summing-up of the results for the whole 

 mental life; as in Herbart, in Germany, we find them illustrated 

 in a new Intellectualism; and in Herbert Spencer, their further 

 development on a Lamarckian platform. In Spencer, it is true, the 

 psychological point of view served the need of a larger philosophical 

 purpose; but he shows that the naturalistic habit of mind had 

 become so fixed that the association psychology could be recast on 

 evolution lines, while claiming still that violence had not been done 

 to its essentially empirical spirit. A later author, in whom the positiv- 

 istic method is well realized, but in whom the genetic spirit is not 

 fully developed, is William James; and still another, who will be 

 named below as one of the pioneers of the experimental psychology, 

 Wilhelm Wundt, is not only not genetic in his naturalism (being 

 neo-vitalistic), but has also a corresponding limitation upon his 

 method, in spite of its positivistic claim (being somewhat obscurantist 

 in his demand that psychology shall yield support to a philosophical 

 voluntarism). 



French-British Evolutionism; Genetic Psychology. The rise of the 

 genetic evolution theory in biology supplied the direct motive to a 

 psychology. Lamarck himself recognized the psychological factor 

 in one of his general principles that in which he formulated the 



1 Indeed, this might be put more strongly; for the era of the Enlightenment 

 in Germany brought a reaction toward the more mystical evaluations of experi- 

 ence based on feeling e. g., in Tetens and Schleiermacher. 



