LIFE AND MIND 



suited in discovery. If this were true, it would 

 not help his case. Metaphysical psychologists 

 have failed in discovery, not because they have 

 directly examined states of consciousness, but 

 because they have constructed unverifiable hy- 

 potheses about the nature of Mind in itself. 

 Where they have abstained from ontological 

 inquiries, and have contented themselves with 

 scientific methods, psychologists have made 

 discoveries. To say nothing of such recent in- 

 quirers as Bain, Wundt, Fechner, and Taine, 

 it may be fairly claimed that, among older spec- 

 ulators, Hobbes, Locke, Leibnitz, Berkeley, 

 Hume, Kant, and Hartley, have by psycho- 

 logic analysis made real and permanent contri- 

 butions to our knowledge of mental operations. 

 And at the very date when Comte was preparing 

 his great treatise for publication, there appeared 

 a remarkable book which, by establishing some 

 of the fundamental laws of Association, went 

 far toward placing psychology upon a scientific 

 basis. It is not to the crude and superficial 

 Gall, as Comte would have us believe, that we 

 must give the respect due to the founder of 

 scientific psychology : that respect is due, in 

 far greater degree, to James Mill, the illustri- 

 ous author of the " Analysis of the Human 

 Mind.** 



Nevertheless, while psychology is a science 

 clearly distinct from biology, dealing with phe- 

 119 



