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130 continuity of the past course of his life, but are the result of his internal development, there comes to every one a day on which his consciousness is so intensified that remembrance remains, and from that time onwards, according to his endowment, more or fewer remembrances are formed (a factor which by itself upsets the whole of modern psychology), so in different men there are many different stimulants of the consciousness of which the last is the hour of death, and from the point of view of their degree of genius men might almost be classified by the number of things that excite their consciousness. I take this opportunity of again urging the falseness of a doctrine of modern psychology (which treats men simply as better or worse pieces of registering apparatus and takes no notice of the internal, ontogenetic development of the mind); I mean the idea that in youth we retain the greatest number of impressions. We must not confuse really experienced impressions with the mere material on which to exercise memorising. Such stuff a child learns more easily simply because it is not weighted with mental impressions. A psychology which is opposed to experience in matters so fundamental must be rejected. What I am attempting at present is no more than to give the faintest indication of that ontogenetic psychology or theoretical biography which sooner or later will replace what now passes for the science of mind. Every programme represents some definite conviction; before we wish to reach a goal we have some definite conception of what the goal is to be. The name "theoretical biography" will define the new subject from philosophy and physiology, and the biological method of treatment introduced by Darwin, Spencer, and others will be widened until it becomes a science capable of giving a rational orderly account of the whole course of the mental life from the cradle to the grave. It is to be called biography, not biology, because it is to deal with the investigation of the permanent laws that rule the mental development of an individual, whereas biology itself concerns itself with individuals themselves.