472 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



embryological, and morbid psychology, from which he 

 expected much assistance, his ideas remained vague, as 

 did those of the contemporary school of the " Ideologues," 

 among whom Destutt de Tracy 1 deserves honourable 

 mention as having conceived the plan of a psychological 

 treatment of grammar. Their merit lay more in drawing 

 the plans of the new science of psychology as a natural 

 science in its largest sense, and of urging its scientific 

 and exact treatment, than in making a real and fruitful 

 beginning on special lines. 



It is a remarkable fact that the first attempt to 

 analyse in detail one of the special instances of psycho- 

 physical interaction came about a hundred years earlier 

 from that successor of Locke who has always been 

 counted as the extreme idealistic development of English 

 7. p speculation. Bishop Berkeley's ' Essay towards a New 

 of Theory of Vision ' (1709) has been called "the verit- 

 able historical starting-point of psycho-physical investi- 

 gation." 2 Although averse to any exact theory of the 

 universe, deeming it " beneath the dignity of the mind 

 to affect exactness," 3 and at war with the mathema- 



1 Picavet (p. 398) says of Destutt 

 de Tracy (1754-1836): "Venu par 

 les sciences a la philosophic, D. 

 de Tracy a donne a l'ide"ologie un 

 nom et un caractere positif. S'il 



2 Dr Edmund Montgomery, in 

 his very interesting and valuable 

 critical analysis of ' Space and 

 Touch,' three memoirs contained 

 in the tenth volume of the first 



a cru, a tort, qu'il pouvait la ; series of ' Mind ' (1885), p. 385. 



constituer de toutes pieces, il a 3 See ' A Treatise concerning the 



fort bien vu que, pour devenir Principles of Human Knowledge,' 



une science independante et com- 109 : " As in reading other 



plete, elle devait s'appuyer sur la , books, a wise man will choose to 



physiologie et la pathologie, sur j fix his thoughts on the sense and 



Fe"tude des enfants, sur celle des 

 fous et sur celle des animaux. II 

 1'a unie intimement a la grammaire 

 et a la logique, a la morale et a 

 1'economie politique, a la legislation 

 et a la politique." 



apply it to use, rather than lay 

 them out in grammatical remarks 

 on the language ; so in perusing 

 the volume of nature it seems 

 beneath the dignity of the mind 

 to affect an exactness in reduc- 



