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 240 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

workers in this field, about the sciences which they ar^ ..imposed to put in this fundamental position, we should get the most incongruous and contra- dictory testimony. Some would say philology, some history, some anthro- pology, some sociology. Not less irreconcilable are present opinions about the relation of psychical sciences to philosophy. We all know — or ought to — that both natural and psychical sciences had their origin in philosophy. Since history, philology, jurisprudence, and social science have, in part, branched off from philosophy, in part have come into existence by combining philosophical doctrines with certain rules of practical life, has not philosophy served its purpose, and must it not now retire from influence ? Or, has philosophy, in contrast with the psychical disciplines, a new aim, and is its mission under the changed circumstances as important as it was in the beginning ?

There is no sign of agreement about this question. Even among those who do not wish to do without philosophy in connection with the psychical sciences there is uncertainty and disagreement about the role that philosophy should assume — whether within or outside of the psychical sciences, whether in superiority or subordination to them. Hence we shall examine more closely the relations of some of the psychical sciences to each other, and then their relations to philosophy.

CHAPTER HI. THE SYSTEM OF PSYCHICAL SCIENCES.

Without doubt the system of psychical sciences has its most evident sanction in the fact that the individual members which we reckon in the sys- tem actually exist, viz., history, philology, economics, jurisprudence, etc., and that from the beginning they have been in close relationship with each other. Although the comprehensive term " psychical sciences " is of recent origin, it is a fact that the sciences so designated constitute a combination of related provinces, like the combination composing the natural sciences, or like the various branches of mathematics. Such a combination does not exclude relations between the members and other sciences lying outside the combina- tion, just as such relations exist between mathematics and natural science. The closer relationship within the combination will manifest itself in the fact that between the coherent but independent sciences of the combination there will appear intermediate territories, about the precise assignment of which there will remain uncertainty ; and, further, that for one of these provinces sometimes the methods and sometimes the results of the related provinces are indispensable.

At the same time, the fact of the actual existence and intimate inter- relationships of the psychical sciences does not suspend the necessity of investigating the reasons for their inclusion in the systematic unity, and also the reasons which made them actually branches of the same genealogical