Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/325

Rh, singing, and so forth, and make himself thoroughly familiar with its natural history, without learning anything of its anatomy, the laws of muscular contraction or digestion, so also the philosopher may investigate the actions of the mind, the succession and relations of ideas, or may formulate the principles of logic, in entire ignorance of the processes which occur in the brain. The conclusions in both cases may be perfectly accurate, but they do not concern the more hidden and less accessible factors.

It is important to recognize the relation of psychology to the physiology of the brain, and to relegate both to their proper places. In reality they are only the different sides of one study and the best distinction of psychology is its success in arranging and classifying the psychic phenomena, whose relation to the physical basis of mind is to be determined. Although psychology is usually regarded as a department of philosophy, it is certainly more completely a natural science, since it deals with natural events, which are learned by direct observation, and which we coordinate by our reason. The slow but unmistakable gravitation of psychology toward physiology does not forecast, it seems to me, the demise of the former, but indicates rather that psychologists, having now gathered and arranged a great mass of data concerning the mind, are making an inevitable step in progress in seeking deeper than ever before for explanations. During the new phase, into which psychology has apparently entered, the principal problems will probably concern the relation of mind to the substratum of matter in which it displays itself. The most important steps which we can hope to take at present must, as far as we can judge, be taken in the field of physiological psychology, the essential purpose of which is to discover the exact nature of the dependence of the psychic phenomena on the physiological and anatomical properties of the body. It is precisely in this direction that Professor Mosso has made an important advance.

Mind appears to us as an image, dimly seen through the clouds of physical facts which encompass it. Some assert it to be merely a mirage, or, at most, an accidental shape into which physical facts have compiled themselves. Others believe that mind is a thing of its own kind. When the sunlight of discovery shall dispel the mists of the unknown, that conceal the true nature of the mind, then that image, now so dim, will become distinct, and its real character evident. That such a result is attainable is the belief, without which many laborious investigations would become purposeless.