ON LIFE AND ORGANISATION. 307 



Note VII. p. 288. 



" AND WITH THE PSVCHOLOGICAL." 



Psychology is to be carefully distinguished from Metaphysics, 

 which is the science of the relations of Being, Knowing, and 

 Thinking. 



Metaphysics have no place in the province of Natural History ; 

 but Psychology is one of those sciences from which the naturalist 

 is obliged to borrow, in his efforts to investigate the properties of 

 organised beings. 



It is a great mistake to consider Psychology as a subject, mysti- 

 cal, vague, unsubstantial, and affording nothing which can be applied 

 to practical purposes. On the contrary, it is a purely inductive 

 science, dealing with facts and their generalisation. Psychology, 

 however, differs from ordinary inductive science in this respect, 

 that the facts with which it deals are not attained through the 

 bodily senses, but by the mental consciousness. 



In the prosecution of ordinary inductive science, the mind 

 throws herself out, as it were, upon external nature, even upon her 

 own organism, if that be the subject of her inquiry. In this act 

 she becomes aware of certain so-called facts, to her at first merely 

 phenomena. 



But, in the investigation of her own constitution, she turns in 

 upon herself, and attains the facts of Psychology, not by sense, but 

 by consciousness. The facts of Psychology are not phenomena, but 

 noumena, in the broad sense of the term. They are not, however, 

 less certainly facts on that account. 



The advance of Psychology, as a department of Anthropology, 

 is opposed by no difficulty other than that inherent in the nature 

 of the subject. But as a department of general Zoology, it has to 

 encounter difficulty in collecting facts. 



Wc must not, however, be repelled by this difficulty, or hold 

 with Bonnet that philosophers will make no progress in the subject 

 " until they have spent some time in the head of an animal, -with- 

 out actually being that animal." 



We determine the characters of the mental acts of our fellow- 

 nien, by observing certain corresponding corporeal actions. 



