EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



one who proposes to write a natural history of all 

 things. Mind, indeed his own mind is all that 

 any man immediately and indisputably, though 

 not completely, 1 knows, which is another excel- 

 lent reason for regarding psychology as logically 

 the first of the sciences. 



This was, indeed, dimly recognized by the many 

 metaphysicians, from Plato onward, who have 

 left mankind a heritage of concatenated words. 2 

 It was recognized that psychology, which we 

 now regard as one of the natural sciences, was 

 merged in had not yet emerged from meta- 

 physics, or theories as to reality. The metaphy- 

 sicians realized that psychology was the initial 

 science in order of logic and concluded that if 

 they looked within their own minds the secret of 

 being might be found therein ; but their failure was 

 due to the fact that, though the study of mind is 

 first in logical order, nothing but unsuccess can 

 follow its practical treatment as initial. Only by 

 study of the external world by and for converse 

 with which the mind has been evolved can we 

 successfully approach the study of mind itself. 

 The first thinker to see and utilize this truth was 

 Herbert Spencer. 



Until his time every psychologist and philosopher, 

 without exception, had treated mind as he knew 

 it his own mind as a thing without antecedents, 



1 See chapter, "On Mind as Unknowable." 

 1 This is not to say that when Plato and Hegel discussed 

 other matters they did not leave us more than mere words. 

 164 



