INTRODUCTION. 409 



individual, it seems to be taken for granted, 

 is not amenable to any law of development 

 which applies to all careers, whatever be the 

 department of activity. But every person who 

 enacts a life is an Ego, and must ultimately 

 manifest the process of the Ego, which is ver- 

 ily universal. Hence Psychology is the only 

 discipline which can reveal the all-dominating 

 principle common to every human life. Phil- 

 osophy as a world-discipline never did and 

 indeed never could give a philosophy of Biog- 

 raphy, which must refuse to have a system 

 foreign to itself clapped upon its free move- 

 ment. The science of Psychology, that is, of 

 the Psyche or Self, can alone penetrate and or- 

 der the Self in all its diversity. Accordingly, 

 Biography, which is the favorite kind of lit- 

 erature for a majority of people, is sometime 

 to reach a new stage of its evolution, advanc- 

 ing out of its present separative, chaotic, dis- 

 tracted condition. All lives must show the 

 common underlying principle or law of all 

 life, which they in one form or other embody. 

 Newton and Darwin in the circuit of their ter- 

 restrial existence, had the one common process 

 of the Ego; but with the former this took a 

 cosmical turn (or mechanical), while with the 

 latter it took a biocosmical turn (or vital). 

 The Biographies of both would give their uni- 

 tary process, but would portray it unfolding 



