640 PSYCHOLOGY. 



be matters of record — to be congruent with the time- and 

 space-relations which our impressions affect. 



In other words, though nature's materials lend them- 

 selves slowly and discouragingly to our translation of them 

 into ethical forms, but more readily into sesthetic forms ; 

 to translation into scientific forms they lend themselves with 

 relative ease and completeness. The translation, it is true, 

 will probably never be ended. The percej)tive order does 

 not give way, nor the right conceptive substitute for it arise, 

 at our bare word of command.* It is often a deadly fight ; 

 and many a man of science can say, like Johannes Midler, 

 after an investigation, ^ Es klebt Blut an der Arbeit.' But 

 victory after victory makes us sure that the essential doom 

 of our enemy is defeat, f 



* Cf. Hodgson : Philosophy of Reflection,- booli ii, chap. v. 



f The aspiration to be 'scientific' is such an idol of the tribe to the 

 present generation, is so sucked in with his mother's milk by every one of 

 us, that we find it hard to conceive of a creature who should not feel it, 

 and harder still to treat it freely as the altogether peculiar and one-sided 

 subjective interest which it is. But as a matter of fact, few even of the 

 cultivated members of the race have shared it ; it was invented but a gen- 

 eration or two ago. In the middle ages it meant only impious magic ; and 

 the way in which it even now strikes orientals is charmingly shown in the 

 letter of a Turkish cadi to an English traveller asking him for statistical 

 iuformatiou, which Sir A. Layard prints at the end of his 'Nineveh and 

 Babylon.' The document is too full of edification not to be given in full. 

 It runs thus : 



'• My Illustrious Friend, and Joy of my Liver! 



"The thing you ask of me is both diflicult and useless. Although I 

 fiiive passed all my days iu this place, I have neither counted the houses 

 nor inquired into the number of the iiihuliitMnts; and as towhnt one ler-on 

 loads on his mules and the other stows away in the bottom of his ship, that 

 is no business of mine. But, above all, as to the previous history of this 

 city, God only knows the amount of dirt and confusion that the infidels 

 may have eaten before the coming of the sword of Islam. It were un- 

 profitable for us to inquire into it. 



" O my soul ! O my lamb ! seek not after the things which concern 

 thee not. Thou earnest unto us and we welcomed thee : go in peace. 



" Of a truth thou hast spoken many words ; and there is no harm done, 

 or the speaker is one and the listener is another. After the fashion of thy 

 »»eople thou hast wandered from one place to another, until thou art happy 

 #nd content in none. We (praise be to God) were born here, and nevser 

 rfesire to quit it. Is it possible, then, that the idea of a general intercourse 



