And now, in bringing this discussion to a close, I will only add that the great want of this age is the prosecution of inquiry into the nature of the human mind as an organic structure, regarded as such. It seems to me that the whole mission of Science is now perverted by a wrong aim, which is to find out the external to the neglect of the internal—to make all exploration terminate in the laws of the physical universe, and go aside from the examination of the spiritual world. It is no reproach to those who essay the latter inquiry that they are scoffed at as "the metaphysicians." It matters not what they are called, so long as they pursue the right path. It is now in regard to the pursuit of science as it was formerly in regard to the writing of history. That philosophical French historian, M. Taine, has luminously marked the change which has come over the methods and objects of historical studies in the following passage:
"When you consider with your eyes the visible man, what do you look for? The man invisible. The words which salute your ears, the gestures, the motions of his head, the clothes he wears, visible acts and deeds of every kind, are expressions merely; somewhat is revealed beneath them, and that is a soul—an inner man is concealed beneath the outer man; the second does not reveal the first; ... all the externals are but avenues converging toward a center; you enter them simply to reach that center, and that center is the genuine man—I mean that mass of faculties and feelings which are the inner man. We have reached a new world, which is infinite, because every action which we see involves an infinite association of reasonings, emotions, sensations new and old, which have served to bring it to light, and which, like great rocks deep-seated in the ground, find in it their end and their level. This under-world is a new subject-matter proper to the historian.... This precise and proved interpretation of past sensations has given to history, in our days, a second birth; hardly anything of the sort was known to the preceding century. They thought men of every race and country were all but identical—the Greek, the barbarian, the Hindoo, the man of the Renaissance, and the man of the eighteenth century—as if they had all been turned out of a common mold, and all in conformity to a certain abstract conception which served for the whole human race. They knew man, but not men; they had not penetrated to the soul; they had not seen the infinite diversity and complexity of souls; they did not know that the moral constitution of a people or an age is as particular and distinct as the physical structure of a family of plants or an order of animals."[153]
In the same way psychology needs a new birth, like the new birth of history. If we would know the mind, we must reach the conviction that there is a mind: and this conviction can be reached only by penetrating through all the externals, through the physical organism, through the diversities of race, through the environment of matter, until we have found the soul. If history, like zoölogy, has found its anatomy, mental science must, in like manner, be prosecuted as an anatomical study. So long as we allow the anatomy of zoölogy to be the predominant and only explanation, the beginning and the end of the mental manifestations, so long we shall fail to comprehend the nature of man, and to see the reason for his immortality.
[GLOSSARY]
OF
SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL TERMS USED IN THIS WORK.
[The following definitions marked with an asterisk are borrowed from the glossary annexed to Darwin's "Origin of Species." The remainder of the definitions are taken from Webster's Dictionary.]
*Aberrant. Forms or groups of animals or plants which deviate in important characters from their nearest allies, so as not to be easily included in the same group with them, are said to be aberrant.