Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/279

Rh it flies in the same atmosphere as the bat? Why should "vibrations" not be the condition of existence of one mental phenomenon as well as of another? Surely the very fact that Dr. Crozier classes all the feelings he mentions as mental affections should prepare him to believe that they have a common basis. But how feelings shall be classified and ranked after they have taken form is a question precisely similar to the question how the various combinations of words should be classified and ranked. In the latter case words are the basis of them all, but we say: "This is an epic poem; this is a moral essay; this is an immoral novel; this is a silly joke; this is a market report." Are these distinctions illusory because words are the basis and substance of all these various forms of composition? Does the poem lose anything of its beauty, or the essay anything of its ethical value, because each was not composed of elements altogether peculiar to itself? The solid globe itself was once a diffused nebula, but we do not on that account find a less varied beauty in flower and tree, in hill-side and running brook and grandly flowing river.

In his sad condition of mental disarray our author betook himself, he says, to the counsels of Thomas Carlyle. That sage, when he heard that his visitor had been reading Spencer, made some uncomplimentary remarks about the latter which we hardly think the visitor was justified in repeating. Apart from this, Carlyle told him in effect that, as he was in the world, he had just to make the best of it, and that in time he would find work that he could do with benefit to himself and others. Finally, our author made what he calls a discovery and offers as a contribution to modern philosophy—namely, that in the mind of man there is a "scale," according to which thoughts and feelings are appraised. Some are high up on the scale and some are low down. He found that there is that in the mind which is not of the mind, and which sits in judgment on all the contents of the mind—something which smiles on every right action and frowns on every wrong one, and yet which he does not care to speak of as conscience. Here was the antidote he required to the "pure and undiluted materialism" which had so paralyzed his moral being in the Principles of Psychology; and, having obtained it, he has been living happily, as we gather, ever since.

We have tried to do justice to the originality of Dr. Crozier's conception, but really with indifferent success. That there is a scale by which we are all accustomed to measure the varying values of our thoughts, feelings, and actions hardly needs to be stated; and that there is substantial agreement between men on the same plane of civilization as to the relative values of different mental products is also unquestionably true. What our author has not shown is how this conflicts with the strict scientific position taken in the Principles of Psychology. He does not tell us that he has repudiated the teachings of that work; indeed, he gives us distinctly to understand that, so far as it affirms the dependence of thought upon physical organization, he adheres to it still. If so, he has only built upon it a super-structure which it was always open to him to build; so, why he should find fault with the foundation it is not easy to see. Science goes as far as she can see her way to go in setting forth the relations between the mind of man and the environing universe. It studies also the human mind in its historical manifestations, and tries to unfold the laws of human conduct. It confines itself to facts which are believed to admit of verification and to inferences which have been tested by