472 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



embryological, and morbid psychology, from which he 

 expected much assistance, his ideas remained vague, as 

 did those of the contemporary school of the " Ideologues," 

 among whom Destutt de Tracy 1 deserves honourable 

 mention as having conceived the plan of a psychological 

 treatment of grammar. Their merit lay more in drawing 

 the plans of the new science of psychology as a natural 

 science in its largest sense, and of urging its scientific 

 and exact treatment, than in making a real and fruitful 

 beginning on special lines. 



It is a remarkable fact that the first attempt to 

 analyse in detail one of the special instances of psycho- 

 physical interaction came about a hundred years earlier 

 from that successor of Locke who has always been 

 counted as the extreme idealistic development of English 

 7. speculation. Bishop Berkeley's ' Essay towards a New 

 -Theory of Theory of Vision ' (1709) has been called "the verit- 



Vision. 1 



able historical starting-point of psycho-physical investi- 

 gation." 2 Although averse to any exact theory of the 

 universe, deeming it " beneath the dignity of the mind 

 to affect exactness," 3 and at war with the mathema- 



1 Picavet (p. 398) says of Destutt 

 de Tracy (1754-1836): <: Venupar 

 les sciences a la philosophic, D. 

 de Tracy a donn6 a 1'ideologie un 

 nom et un caractere positif. S'il 

 a cru, a tort, qu'il pouvait la 

 constituer de toutes pieces, il a 

 fort bien vu que, pour devenir 

 une science independante et com- 

 plete, elle devait s'appuyer sur la 

 physiologic et la pathologic, sur 

 1'etude des enfants, sur celle des 

 fous et sur celle des animaux. II 

 1'a unie intimement a la grammaire 

 et a la logique, a la morale et a 

 1'^conomie politique, a la legislation 

 et a la politique." 



2 Dr Edmund Montgomery, in 

 his very interesting and valuable 

 critical analysis of ' Space and 

 Touch,' three memoirs contained 

 in the tenth volume of the first 

 series of 'Mind' (1885), p. 385. 



3 See 'A Treatise concerning the 

 Principles of Human Knowledge,' 

 109 : " As in reading other 

 books, a wise man will choose to 

 fix his thoughts on the sense and 

 apply it to use, rather than lay 

 them out in grammatical remarks 

 on the language ; so in perusing 

 the volume of nature it seems 

 beneath the dignity of the mind 

 to effect an exactness in reduc- 



