436 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



has enriched our language, and testifies to the fact that 

 this tendency has permeated not only all scientific and 

 philosophical, but also the popular literature of our age. 

 We may call it the spirit of comprehension in opposition 

 to that of definition. 



I may, later on, have an opportunity of dwelling 

 more fully upon this change of thought in the course 

 of the nineteenth century ; at present it will suffice to 

 point out that no subject of philosophical or scientific 

 interest has been more profoundly affected by it than 

 the study of man in his individual and collective exist- 

 ence. Formerly all the sciences which have to do with 

 this subject started from the study of the individual 

 organism or the individual mind, frequently disregarding 

 altogether the environment or collective life of man 

 or reaching this only by slow and uncertain steps. 

 Latterly, however, not only has the collective life of 

 man attracted more attention than the individual, it 

 has become rather the fashion to place society, in some 

 form or other, in the foreground, to start with some 

 definition of the social "Together," of the collective 

 life of human beings, and to approach in this way not 

 only the study of humanity or mankind at large, but 

 also, through it, to get a better understanding of the 

 nature and life of the individual mind itself. It is 

 not long since we have been told that the individual 

 mind must be considered as exhibiting two sides which 

 may be appropriately termed the subjective and the 

 social self; nor is it unlikely that from this point of 

 view much of earlier and later psychology may be 



