2 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



stumbling footsteps of mankind along the dark paths 

 of social progress. 



Psychology is extending every year the know- 

 ledge of mind and its processes, conscious and un- 

 conscious. Man, as a piece of work, noble in 

 reasbn, infinite in faculty, is finding himself to be 

 the foremost problem of the age. New light has 

 been thrown on the theory of knowledge and on 

 the difficult problem of how knowledge at all comes 

 to be possible to a being whose frame is but the 

 quintessence of dust. For the human mind is the 

 agent which has built up the goodly edifice of 

 applied thought to be examined in the succeeding 

 pages, and rightly claims a place in the record of the 

 construction. 



Two courses are open to us. We may take know- 

 ledge as we find it at the present hour and draw a 

 picture of it, as it now stands ; or we may trace its 

 growth from first beginnings in the dawn of civil- 

 ization and watch the slow uprising of the various 

 parts of the structure. 



To those whose interest lies in the workings of the 

 human mind, there is much to be learned from the 

 development of natural science. Its inner meaning, 

 its relations with other branches of learning, its 

 possibilities of future development, are best re- 

 vealed by some application of the historical method. 

 Moreover, it is through a critical examination of 

 its past history that we can obtain an insight into 

 the value of the present stage in the evolution of 

 any branch of the subject, and may be saved from 

 the danger of that error, lying in wait for each 

 generation in its turn the error of believing that, 



