530 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



logues " pointed to the importance of the philosophical 

 study of language and grammar ; the idealistic school in 

 Germany ended by leading to the study of the objective 

 mind in history, art, and philosophy ; the school of 

 Herbart in Waitz, Lazarus, and Steinthal led into 

 " Volkerpsychologie " and " Sprachwissenschaft " ; and it 

 is well known how in our days the synthetic philosophy 

 of Mr Herbert Spencer in England has entered on the 

 study of sociology on the large scale. We hear on all 

 sides of natural histories of , mankind, of society, of re- 

 ligion, &c., and they appear either in the modest attire of 

 the other and older natural histories which we have been 

 accustomed to, preparing the ground by patient and 

 tmbiassed collection of facts, or they attach themselves 

 to certain philosophical theories, such as are furnished by 

 the dialectics of Hegel, or by the evolutionary doctrine 

 of Darwin and Spencer, in connection with which we shall 

 meet them in a future section of this work. For it has 

 been found here, as it had been in the older natural 

 histories, that the accumulation of facts and materials 

 was of little use unless some leading idea was at 

 hand by which it became possible to regulate and 

 arrange them. 



Thus we see how the psycho-physical problem the 

 question of the interaction of mind and body, of soul and 

 nature, of the inner and the outer worlds is being 

 attacked from two entirely different sides, from the 

 side of the individual and from that of the collective 

 life of the human being : the mental principle is being 

 studied in its inner and hidden existence as the unifying 

 and centralising factor of individual life, or in its ex- 



