OP SOCIETY. 



431 



one, and can be traced to a habit or tendency of thought 

 which has made itself felt in the course of the second 

 half of the century. This tendency shows itself in the 

 treatment of nearly every one of the great philo- 

 sophic problems, and is likewise prominent in scientific 

 thought. Many words suggest themselves by which ( 

 this tendency may be characterised, but no term exists as opposed 



J J to ' Atom- 



at present which is generally accepted and would be ism -' 

 intelligible without much explanation. 1 It is more con- 



is. 



Synopsis" 



1 I have allowed this passage, 

 which was written more than four 

 years ago, to stand, though since 

 that time and in course of the 

 revision of the present section of 

 this history some progress has 

 been made in more clearly defin- 

 ing and naming the tendency of 

 thought referred to in the text. 

 The fact that -practically th whole 

 of this history has so far been 

 written without the use of a 

 comprehensive term wherewith to 

 characterise the more recent 

 thought of the century may be a 

 proof to my readers that it has 

 not been written from any pre- 

 conceived point of view or with the 

 object of proving some distinctive 

 generalisation. The latter emerged 

 only at the end of the composition 

 of the text as a very broad induc- 

 tion resting upon a large amount 

 of detail, and has, during the re- 

 vision, been referred to on various 

 occasions, for the most part only 

 in the notes. As explained in two 

 Papers read before the " University 

 of Durham Philosophical Society " 

 in May 1910 and in February 

 1913 : " On a General Tendency of 

 Thought during the second half 

 of the Nineteenth Century," and 

 " On the Synoptic Aspect of 

 Reality," the tendency referred to 

 had been already defined by Comte 

 in an early tract as the rue 



d'ensemble in contrast to the vue 

 de detail, and by various German 

 writers, but notably by Wilhelm 

 Dilthey, as the Gesammtanschauung, 

 and I also explained there as I have 

 done supra, vol. iii. p. 193 n., that 

 in correspondence with Prof. 

 Sorley of Cambridge I have fixed 

 on the term the "synoptic view 

 or aspect," contrasting synopsis 

 with the combined process of 

 analysis and synthesis ; the for- 

 mer taking in at a glance the 

 totality of a complex subject, 

 the latter dissecting the same into 

 its parts and then attempting to 

 bring them together again to a 

 united whole. For instances of 

 the working of these different pro- 

 cesses see various passages in this 

 section, notably vol. iii. 192 sqq. t 

 240, 350, 395 sqq., 415, 465, 608, 

 612 n. It seems to me that a simi- 

 lar view must have been before the 

 minds of many thinkers on many 

 occasions ; I refer only to one ex- 

 ample which casually caught my 

 eye quite recently. In an Article 

 entitled " A Sketch of a Philosophy 

 of Order" ('Mind,' 1913, pp. 197 

 and 198), Prof. J. S. Mackenzie 

 writes : ' ' The modes of unity are 

 not something foreign to the 

 material which they build up but 

 are rather contained in it from 

 the very beginning. . . . To use 

 one of Kant's own antitheses we 



