The Gifts of Science 129 



especially Tennyson, to John Fiske; from Daudet to 

 Tolstoi and Maeterlinck. Without modern science "In 

 Memoriam" could not have been written, nor could 

 Maeterlinck have ever dreamed of "Destiny." In edu- 

 cation, to say nothing of the place which scientific studies 

 have in the curricula of the world, we may note the al- 

 most universal adoption of the so-called scientific method, 

 the laboratory method, a leaven that now leavens the 

 whole lump. Even the law, in all the better schools of 

 our country, is now taught by the study of cases, as the 

 naturalist studies types, cases that have been presented 

 and passed upon by the great courts, and the principle 

 of the law is deduced from the conduct of decisions. 

 And what shall we say of child-study and the entire ef- 

 fort of recent educational theorists who base all hope of 

 educational progress upon the knowledge of the natural 

 history of the child? The child is recognized as a part 

 of nature, and the effort is making to bring him into har- 

 mony with nature. 



In philosophy the revolution has been yet more re- 

 markable, more absolute, and more complete. The old- 

 time metaphysics, based upon introspection only, has dis- 

 appeared. In the older sense there is almost no philoso- 

 phy, save as presented in the history of successive schools 

 of human guessing. Not that there is no philosophizing : 

 philosophy has been lost in psychology and a dozen other 

 things, and psychology, when scientific, is little else than 

 physiology, the physiology of the nervous system, with 

 definite experimental study of the special senses, such 

 mapping of the surface of the brain, in fact, as our 

 knowledge will permit; with hopeful expectation of a 



