Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/17

Rh in his attacks on Comte's serial classification of the sciences he denies that there is any serial order. But whenever he mentions the subjects of his "Synthetic Philosophy" he always arranges them in the same order, corresponding to that of his original program and of all subsequent programs. No one will probably question the propriety of this arrangement, and it may be inferred that he regarded psychology as having some such relation to biology as the latter has to chemistry, i. e., as in a sense growing out of it. Now, whereas he does clearly show this filiation of biology and chemistry, it is difficult to find in his psychology a recognition of its dependence upon biology in the same sense. This is probably due to the fact that the "Psychology" was first written and published as an independent work several years before he conceived the idea of a "Synthetic Philosophy," and afterward revised, enlarged, and adapted, and then set up in its proper niche in the general structure. But the task of adapting it was not an easy one, and he seems to have devoted himself more to what he regarded as its improvement, to the answering of criticisms, and to bringing it up to date, than to linking it on to his "Biology" which stands before it, and to his "Sociology," which was to follow.

He wrote the "Psychology" when fresh from the reading of Hamilton, Mansel, Mill and Kant, and the point of view was that of the old philosophy of mind, which he, indeed, attacked, but scarcely from the modern scientific point of view. This is more true of the second volume than of the first. The work opens, as do most works on psychology, with a treatise on the nervous system, and the chapter on Æstho-physiology is certainly luminous and forms a new departure. His definition of mind as consisting of feelings and the relations between feelings is inexpugnable. In part III. he treats of life and mind as "correspondence," but does not seem to regard mind as an outgrowth of life. In treating pleasures and pains at the end of part II, he recognizes the existence of feelings which do not consist of pleasure or pain, and even calls them "indifferent," but he does not there or elsewhere show that the function of such feelings is to furnish knowledge. This was perceived by Reid, though he did not grasp its import. Spencer thus fails to show the genesis of the rational powers. He clearly sets forth the biologic origin of feeling, but he does not perceive that the intellect was also an advantageous attribute whose origin can be explained on natural principles. Notwithstanding the acknowledged ability of this work, these and other deficiencies deprive it of the title given it by some of being Mr. Spencer's chef d'oeuvre. Standing as it does between the "Biology" and the "Sociology," with neither of