Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/240

 236 a new kind of phenomenon which we term self-consciousness. From the correspondence of our reactions with those of other people we conclude with scientific probability that they too are possessed of self-consciousness. We draw the same conclusion concerning a few of the higher animals. How far down the scale anything similar is present is not to be ascertained with the means at our command to-day, for the analogy between organization and action rapidly diminishes as we pass down the scale. Still in view of the very great gulf between man and the higher animals, this series is presumably not very long. Moreover, there are many reasons for regarding the gray cortical substance of the brain with its characteristic pyramidal cells as the anatomical substratum for this kind of nervous activity.

The study of the processes of self-consciousness is the subject-matter of psychology. Some departments usually considered a part of philosophy really belong to this science, viz., the theory of knowledge. Esthetics, and still more ethics, are, however, a part of social science.

The latter deals with beings in so far as they may be combined in groups with common functions. In place of an individual mind we have here a collective one. The latter, by virtue of the average struck between the variations of the individuals, presents simpler relations than the former. Thence we may deduce the problem of the historical sciences. The events of our world depend partly upon physical, partly upon psychological factors. Both show a one-sidedness in regard to time. Thus arises, on the one hand, a history of the sky and the earth; and, on the other, a history of the organisms up to man.

The problem of history is to fix past facts through the effects they have wrought. Where the latter are not present we are dependent for a conception of the facts upon that most uncertain procedure, analogy. We must observe, however, that an event which has left no trail has absolutely no interest for us. Our interest in an event is directly proportional to the extent of the change it has produced upon the present. The problem of history is, however, as little exhausted by determining past facts as is that of physics by ascertaining an isolated fact, such as determining the temperature of a given place at a given time. The individual facts serve rather to discover the general properties of the collective mind; and the much-discussed laws of history are laws of collective psychology. Just as physical and chemical laws are discovered in order that with their help we may predict future events (such as those produced in experiment or technology), so laws of history should render possible the control and the development of society and of politics. We observe that the great statesmen of all times assiduously studied history; and hence we may conclude that, despite the doubts expressed by many scholars, numerous laws actually exist in history .