INTRODUCTORY. 23 



the psycho-physicist or been reduced to a mere semblance, 

 to a discontinuous epi-phenomenon, asserted itself in full 

 force when philosophers looked around at the great 

 structures of human history and civilisation, at the 

 fabric of language, the institutions of society, the monu- 

 ments of literature, art, and industry. Compared with 

 the amount of external matter and energy which Nature 

 even only on this small globe of ours works with, the 

 actual material and energy, the substances employed, in 

 all the literatures, the monuments of art, the composi- 

 tions of music, or even the products of industry, are 

 infinitesimal, a vanishing quantity ; yet they are the 

 greatest reality that surrounds us, being of more import- 

 ance to us than all the rest of the world put together. 

 How has this small assemblage of matter and energy, 

 which is the bearer and preserver, the repository of all 

 mental life and interest, acquired that additional reality ? 

 This is the philosophical question which a study of history 

 forces upon us. 



" Oh, the little more, and how much it is, 

 And the little less, and what worlds away ! " 



It is this little more or less that makes all the differ- 

 ence. It gives to the small piece of canvas the increasing 

 value which all the bales of canvas in the world do not 

 equal ; it gives to the small block of marble, hewn out of 

 the quarries of Pentelicon or Carrara, an importance as 

 a unique object of art ; it gives to the slab of stone, or 

 the sheet of paper, valueless in themselves, the position 

 of priceless monuments, to the score of music a mean- 

 ing which could not otherwise be expressed; it dis- 



