SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE METHODS 



est vein of the Lockian philosophy, prepared 

 the way for James Mill to bring psychology 

 still more thoroughly under the sway of scien- 

 tific methods. But the imperfect condition of 

 biology prevented the significance of this move- 

 ment from being detected in the eighteenth 

 century. The labours of Hartley were almost 

 entirely overshadowed by the superficial sensa- 

 tionalism of Condillac and the crude material- 

 ism of Helvetius and Holbach. The distinctly 

 inferior character of French psychological spec- 

 ulation since the death of Malebranche appears 

 strikingly, both in these shallow systems and in 

 the spiritualistic reaction against them which the 

 present century has seen conducted by Laro- 

 miguiere and Victor Cousin ; a philosophy made 

 up of mere tawdry rhetoric, quite innocent of 

 observation and induction,^ resting on passion- 

 ate appeals to the testimony of " /^ coeur ;^^ 

 which finally, in our own times, has (it would 

 appear) harangued itself to death. But in Eng- 



^ ** Quiconque entre dans I'etude de I'esprit humain par 

 la voie de la reflexion, marche droit au but. Quiconque ne 

 suit d' autre methode que la methode experimentale de Bacon 

 et de Newton, ne court pas le risque, il est vrai, de tomber 

 dans les hypotheses extravagantes, mais se condamne a des 

 circuits immenses qui aboutissent a des resultats mediocres.'* 

 Cousin, Philosophie Ecossaise, p. 307. — A fair sample of M. 

 Cousin's appreciation of scientific method. The discovery 

 of the law of gravitation, I suppose, was one of these ** re- 

 sultats mediocres ' ' ! 



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