LIMITS OF COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 715 



and of loyalty l to others. It is therefore impossible to dispose of 

 this objection to the theory of self-development, on the ground that 

 it involves purely metaphysical considerations. For psychology, 

 as well as metaphysical reflection, discloses this untemporal quality 

 of conscious selves. 



On the other hand, this difficulty cannot be admitted to be 

 final. A scientific study of selves, in untemporal relation to each 

 other, is indeed possible; but the temporal relation of selves to 

 their own past and future, as well as to the temporal experience 

 of other selves, must be admitted as a second possibility. For sci- 

 ence is, after all, but a systematization of the every-day experience, 

 and the facts of self-development are unquestionably matters of 

 every-day observation. In other words, a self may be regarded, 

 from the scientific as perhaps contrasted with the metaphysical 

 point of view, now as temporal and again as untemporal; now as 

 presenting a complexity of untemporal qualities and relations, 

 again as presenting a succession of unfolding phases. 



Genetic psychology, the study of developing selves, is there- 

 fore a legitimate science. This admission leads the way to a more 

 precise definition of development. At the outset, it must be in- 

 sisted that development, in the technical sense of evolutionary 

 biology, cannot possibly be predicated of conscious selves. This 

 will be admitted, when it is considered that heredity and natural 

 selection are essential features of biological development. But it is 

 simply impossible for one self to transmit its characters to another. 

 Every self, on the other hand, has a certain independence and 

 identity, which is quite incompatible with a transmission of char- 

 acters. The traditional conception of psychic heredity, as set forth, 

 for example, by Ribot, 2 is nothing more nor less than an empirical 

 observation of the psychic likenesses between children and their 

 parents. 3 In this sense of mere similarity, psychic heredity is, of 

 course, a fact. Such similarity does not, however, involve a trans- 

 mission of mental characters. The conception of development, 

 so far as it includes that of heredity, in this stricter sense, is appli- 

 cable not to conscious selves but to animal bodies. 



This ruling out of the factor of heredity sufficiently proves it 

 impossible to conceive a self as developing in biological fashion. 

 The position is strengthened by the reflection that natural selection, 

 the preservation of certain individuals through the destruction of 

 others, is altogether incompatible with one important tendency 

 of psychic progress. This is the social tendency to protect and to 

 help the weak. Every discussion of the doctrine of human evolution 



1 Cf. the writer's An Introduction to Psychology, chaps, xiv-xxi 



2 L'Hfredite Psychologique, 1902. 



3 Cf. Ribot's virtual admission c: this, op. cit., p. 387. 



