SECTION 4. THE SCIENTIFICALLY TRAINED INDIVIDUAL. 29 



of a science, owing to the presence of sifted facts and ex- 

 planations, may allow of ready and speedy generalisation and 

 deduction, whereas at the birth of a science the initial ignorance 

 may compel exhaustive enquiries and tediously slow advance. 

 Compare in this respect medieval alchemy with twentieth cen- 

 tury chemistry. So, too, the application of experiment, of de- 

 duction, of mathematical formula, of comparative or genetic 

 methods, depends on the subject matter and on the stage of 

 development of any science. As a consequence, when the 

 botanist, for example, turns to politics or to religion, one gene- 

 rally observes that there is no noteworthy distinction between 

 the precariousness of his judgments and those of the typical 

 politician or theologian. x Indeed, in his crude attempt to apply 

 in a generalised form the methods he employs in his highly 

 specialised science, he is not seldom grievously in error. Some 

 of the scientific light sheds no doubt a weak, phosphorescent 

 illumination over nearly his whole intellectual being ; but this is 

 of trifling account. The theory of teaching men to be scientific 

 in their general thought by bringing them into contact with some 

 particular science is, therefore, plausible, but nothing more. 

 The fallacy just referred to is interestingly illustrated by the 

 fortunes of psychology. In its earliest phases, and among the 

 ancients generally, it was allied to metaphysics. At a certain 

 point, as with Wolff and Kant, it became rational. When 

 scientific enquiries began to grow common, men thought, as in 

 England from the time of Hobbes to James Mill, that the method 

 of developing a science of the mind was to eschew transcen- 

 dental considerations and cultivate speculative introspection to 

 which movement was due the associationist school. Herbart, 

 who was much impressed with the grandeur of the science of 

 physics and the value of mathematics, looked, in imitation of 

 the physicists, upon ideas as isolated mind atoms governed by 

 a law of levity, and endeavoured to explain the nature of the 

 human mind by valuating these ideas and their relations 

 mathematically. Fechner, following Weber, devoted himself to 

 experiment, and constructed the science of psycho-physics. 

 With Wundt psychology became predominantly physiological', 

 and to-day the tendency is to place the emphasis on the in- 

 stincts and on the emotional and volitional life generally, whilst 

 new schools are emerging stressing the psychology of the un- 

 conscious, the aspect of behaviour, and the native psychic powers 

 alleged to be revealed by psychological tests. Nor can we do 

 more than allude to the efforts to comprehend the mind through 

 the study of abnormal states, through the growth of mind in 

 the individual, in races, and in animal life, or through all these 

 combined. Whether a haven of rest has been reached by psy- 



1 The absence of a general methodology explains how men of scientific 

 distinction are frequently found to be outrageously unscientific when passing 

 judgment on problems outside their domain. 



