ON THE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL VIEW OF NATUBE. 523 



forces that hem her in, resolve themselves at last into 

 her overthrow. There is little of the grand style about 

 these new prism, pendulum, and chronograph philo- 

 sophers. They mean business, not chivalry. What 

 generous divination and that superiority in virtue which 

 was thought by Cicero to give a man the best insight 

 into nature have failed to do, their spying and scraping, 

 their deadly tenacity and almost diabolical cunning, will 

 doubtless some day bring about. . . . The experimental 

 method has quite changed the face of the science, so far 

 as the latter is a record of the mere work done." 



It is, however, only fair to remark that it has never 

 been the object of any science, and can, therefore, no 

 more be the object of exact psychology, to deal with 

 everything at once, and that psycho-physical science has 

 quite as much right to postpone the question, What is 

 mind ? 1 as biological science has had to postpone, or 

 even to eliminate, the question, What is life ? But this 

 comparison reveals also the essential difference between 

 the exact science of life and the exact science of mind. 

 Of life we know only through the observation of living 

 beings, but of mind we have not only the apparent 

 knowledge of its unity, which introspection forces upon 



1 " Sensation, Retentiveness, As- shocked at Lange's mot about a psy- 

 sociation by Contiguity, 'these are chology without a soul, but the 

 to be our ultimate and sufficient ' modern ' psychology is a psychol- 

 psychological conceptions : the ! ogy without even consciousness, 

 facts of feeling and conation are ' Content of consciousness ' as much 



as you like, but consciousness itself, 

 consciousness as activity, is not our 



resolved into facts of sensation 

 and all mind-processes held to be 

 not merely conditioned, but ex- 

 plained by brain -processes, which 



affair ; we leave that to metaphy- 

 sics, say our ' modern ' teachers. " 



they accompany as epi-phenomena (Prof. J. Ward, on " Modern Psy- 

 or ' Begleit-erscheinungen.' It is chology," ' Mind,' 2nd series, vol. ii. 

 not so long since the world was p. 55). 



