THE RATIONALE OF PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 761 



interest. If, in the Middle Ages, philosophy could be 

 termed the " handmaid of Theology," one might almost 

 be tempted to say that at the present moment it 

 is the " handmaid of social science." For the present 

 argument, however, it is important to point out how 

 Positivism, in the hands of Comte and his disciples, in- 

 volved two psychological problems. First, it pointed to 

 Altruism as the essentially human as opposed to Egoism 

 as the essentially animal element in human nature. 

 Secondly, it insisted upon some form of social " Together " 

 as the primary fact of social life, in opposition to the 

 view that individuals form the constituting elements of 

 society. And Comte himself gave expression to the 

 deeper psychological truth that the study of concrete 

 nature, as distinguished from the study of abstract 

 notions, must be imbued with the esprit d'ensemUe, the 

 synoptic view of things, a truth which has found ex- 

 pression in modern psychological doctrine which starts, 

 not with isolated sensations and their aggregates, but 

 with the continuum in time and space of mental states. 



II. 



At the beginning of this chapter I stated that, in the 25. 

 history of Thought, the most prominent feature of the of the 



positions 



change which took place during the nineteenth century f^nd 1 

 was probably the ascendancy attained by the scientific Idealism - 

 interest which, for a time, seemed almost to vanquish 

 the philosophical interest, escaping also the destructive 

 influence of criticism. In the popular estimation, this 



