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 outside it, they effect their constructions with sensation alone. And the reason is very simple: it is the only thing they know. To the metaphysical psychologist, who claims sensation as his own property, saying, “But this sensation is a state of my consciousness, it is mine, it is myself,” the physicist has the right to answer: “I beg your pardon! this sensation is the external object that I am studying; it is my column of mercury, my spring, my precipitate, my amoeba; I comprehend these objects directly, and I want no other.” Psychology finds itself, therefore, exactly on the same footing as the other sciences in the degree in which it studies sensations that it considers as its own property. I have already said that the sensations proper to psychology are hardly represented otherwise than by the emotional sensations produced by the storms in the apparatus of organic life.

We now come to the definitions by content. They have been numerous, but we shall only quote a few. The most usual consists in saying, that Psychology studies the facts of consciousness. This formula passes, in general, as satisfactory. The little objection raised against it is, that it excludes the unconscious facts which play so important a part in explaining the totality of mental life; but it only requires some usual phrase to repair this omission. One might add, for