CHAPTER XIV. 



LIFE AND MIND. 



BEFORE we proceed to treat of psychical life as the con 

 tinuous establishment of subjective relations that are in 

 correspondence with environing objective relations, we must 

 dispose of certain questions which have been raised by 

 Comte and his disciples concerning the right of psychology 

 to be regarded as an independent science. Part of Comte s 

 plan for the renovation of philosophy was the rescuing of 

 psychology from the exclusive control of metaphysicians. 

 The manner in which he proposed to accomplish the rescue 

 is only too briefly described : he simply denied in toto the 

 claims of psychology to be regarded as an independent 

 science. According to Comte there can be no science, worthy 

 of the name, founded upon the observation and comparison 

 of states of consciousness ; and psychology must therefore 

 be studied as a part of biology, by the aid solely of the 

 methods used in biology. That is, the study of mind must 

 be reduced to the study of nervous phenomena simply. It 

 is easy to say that the inevitable outcome of this is the 

 unqualified assertion of materialism. But as Comte himself 

 never drew such an inference, and always protested ener 

 getically against materialism, as based upon illegitimate 

 inferences from the study of nervous phenomena, it would 



