Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/204

 Galich had become aware of its value, and some thirty years later Ushinsky had made an attempt to analyse the phenomena of feeling and will. The scientific study of nature had naturally much effect on psychology: Syetchekov tried to solve the problem of mind and body in this way and in his reply to Kavelin's pamphlet expressed the opinion that only physiologists can attempt a solution. Troitzky wished "to exclude metaphysics from psychology," and introduced English empirical psychology to Russians. This movement, partly supported by Vladislavlev, an adherent of Fechner, was however, exposed to some fluctuations. Grote, at the beginning of his career, was ready to accept it from a "positive" point of view, but later turned to metaphysics and terminated by applying the general law of conservation of energy to psychical processes. The metaphysical conception of psychology provoked, moreover, criticism in the modern scientific treatises of Orshansky and Lange, in the works of Chelpanov, Vvedensky and others

In course of time further applications of physiology and psychology were made in the domain of linguistics: here, as in other departments, description of facts preceded their explanation. General knowledge of this kind was, of course, very scarce in Old Russia: but Messerschmidt and other travellers, particularly in the second half of the 18th century, had gathered linguistic materials. Backmeister made a great collection of such data, which were published