CHAPTER XL. 



HABIT AND VARIATION IN HISTORY. 



I HAVE in the foregoing chapters traced the outline of the The 

 sciences, or rather the single science, of life and mind, i^^fg^'and" 

 regarded as consisting of various and manifold applications mind has 

 of the two principles of Habit and Intelligence. That systema- 

 science, though at present in a state of very rapid advance, ^^'^'^'^' 

 is fully systematized ; a vast number of its problems 

 remain to be solved, but a fundamental revolution in the 

 mode of conceiving of the problems appears as totally 

 impossible in the science of life and mind as in dynamics 

 or in astronomy. The same is true of all the mathematical 

 and physical sciences. I hope to show in a future chapter 

 that there is a perfect series of sciences, from abstract as have 

 logic, through mathematics, physics, and chemistry, to ^^^^^ ''*'° 

 the sciences of life and mind. The ground-plan of this mathe- 

 series has been so well laid, as regards both the principles physics, 

 of the sciences themselves and their relation to each ^^"-^ . , 



. chemistry : 



other, that the work can never by any possibility have 

 to be done over again. The outline has been drawn, and 

 what remains to be done consists exclusively in fiUing 

 it up. 



But there is another group of sciences which have not 

 yet been thus systematized. No doubt they admit of 

 systematization, but the time for doing this work is, but the 

 perhaps, not yet come. The sciences I speak of are those the "esuits 

 whereof the subject-matter consists of the results of the of man's 

 activity of the human mind, and the laws by which the activity 

 mind acts under particular conditions. I cannot attempt have not 

 even a complete enumeration of this group of sciences : systema- 



